Prof. Dr. Srisakdi Charmonman is the first Thai national to earn a Ph.D. in computations from Georgia Institute of Technology in the US in 1964. His career spanning over 40 years has seen him as founding member and head of several renowned institutions and organizations around the world. Prof. Srisakdi Charmonman has authored more than 1000 papers on Internet and computers and was named
British Council in Thailand connecting people with learning ideas : David Mathias, British Council, Thailand
The British Council, the United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational and cultural relations, in Thailand connects people with learning opportunities and creative ideas from the UK and builds lasting relationships between Thailand and the UK. Operating in 110 countries worldwide, it now has 4 centres in Bangkok-Siam Square, Pinklao, Ladprao and Sri Nakarin and one in Chiang Mai, after starting in Thailand in 1938. David Mathias in British Council, Thailand talking to Rumi Mallick of Digital Learning on building partnerships and networks between Thailand and the UK, on projecting creativity, and creating opportunities to connect with the latest skills, ideas and experience.
What are the main focuses of British Council initiatives in ICT in education in Thailand?
I suppose there are many focuses, but the main relationship we have with the various ministries and agencies within Thailand is helping them in implementing their education progarmme. That goes back to revamping the tight curriculum for mainstream education that happened four/five years ago, the curriculum was rewritten and the main focus to that is teachers should adopt different approaches, that is studentcentred approach, integrated to different subject areas within their own subject. With ICT it became easy for the teachers to adopt student-centric approaches. One way was by allowing student access to information online and allowing students to develop project works themselves, where the teacher acts more as a facilitator of learning. So the focus of our education and ICT initiatives is among leaders, teachers and students in mainstream education.
What kind of partnership do you have with the Government in Thailand?
We are working mainly with the Ministry of Education, with the office of Basic Education Commission. For example we are working with them in one large project- Lab Schools. We hope, eventually there will be 900 Lab schools in the country. These Lab- Schools will act as community schools for their region. In these Lab- Schools, we run trainings for teachers in applying ideas in innovative teaching, using hardwares, ideas for putting that in practical use for curriculum teaching.
So is the Lab-School focused on teachers’ training?
That’s one area, but the Lab-School initiative is something about the leaders, how they can deploy computers in their schools. So we have done some Head teacher leadership training through bringing leadership trainers from UK and train the head teachers here. And I have tried to introduce the use of ICT as a tool for professional development of the head teachers. So we look at two things- Head teachers being able to talk to Head teachers in forums, and also Head teachers being able to access resources for self development and professional development.
Do you have any kind of monitoring or evaluation method? You work for two/three years, do you have any kind of measurement system of the outcomes?
Yes, for this there are ongoing negotiations with the Ministry of education. There are number of aims and objectives, also indicators of what is happening. There are ways of monitoring our progress. And when we say we’ll leave the project at a certain stage, n doubt we will continue to consult.
You also promote sports as a means of education!
Yes, that’s one of the very successful projects started in 2003; it’s a global project. It ran from British Council UK in partnership with the Sports Trust of England and its an initiative that looks to leadership skills amongst 14 to 19 year old and gives responsibility for decision making that might otherwise come from a teacher. For some reason, to reengage some disaffected learners back into the mainstream education and to give them the confidence to carry on their education. We started that project in 2003 in three schools in Thailand. Firstly, the head teachers from Thailand went to meet their counterpart in UK and then some teachers fro there come over to do workshops developing sports integrated to other curricular subjects, like sport and Math, Sport and Science.
You still have three schools in Thailand?
The project expanded in to 9 schools now. Five in Bangkok, two in Greater Bangkok, one in North of Thailand Chiang Mai and one in Sonkla. The ministry of Education is impressed with the success. So its an initiative they would like the Lab schools involved in.
There are several challenges in ICT in education. What are the present challenges for Thailand?
The major challenge is the teaching population is quite old. And its getting people to be willing to change their attitude give it a go as such and this challenge is compounded by the fact that we still don’t have very good support teams in some of the schools, IT teams, Internet access are still quite slow and it’s the same in our teaching centers where we were trying to persuade or convince the teachers that the use of ICT might be a motivating factor for a student or might add a different dimension to teaching. There is also a knowledge gap between the teachers and the students. If you ask a student to go on a computer the do that in seconds, but if you ask that to a teacher, they cannot. So our trial is developing a teacher as a mentor or a guide and a student as an expert. My experience as a teacher (I was a teacher in English as a foreign language) is great to work with students; I learn use of ICT from the students. We convert to a very good team, and I never feel the lack of respect or loss of face.
But do you think that kind of culture exist when a teacher and student covert to a team?
It’s beginning. Teachers are realising now, they are more of a team now. And that’s another success of Lab school project.
You are focusing ICT as a prime medium of deliberating education in schools, or is it more in developing content, training, teachers capacity building.
It’s a bit above. I think Thailand still is in the stage of the custom in themselves with use of computers in getting familiar with that. Its in a transitional state than experimenting with the use of ICTs. I think its 50-50. I do quite a work using multimedia devices with students to create learning objects, to create mini projects with series of lessons, to give teachers ideas so that they can have more continuity through out the entire term, rather than from one lesson to one lesson to one lesson. And also we are bringing in teachers of other subjects as well, I run a website, where I put on projects, where I can go an integrate art and English with maths, that also have an online element, where I can discuss projects with other people doing it.
So it’s more blended
NSTDA Online Learning Project (NOLP) : Surasit Vannakrairojn, Managing Director,National On-line Learning Project,Thailand, Thailand
As Thailand gears up for e-Learning, addressing issues of connectivity and capacity, developing relevant standard compliant content and has also become crucial. Surasit Vannakrairojn, Managing Director, National On-line Learning Project, Thailand, discusses e-Learning in Thailand, the importance of Sharable Content Object Reference Model or SCORM and NOLP initiatives in developing SCORM standards in an interview with Rumi Mallick of Digital Learning.
What is the market trend in e-Learning in Thailand?
Cannot give you an exact figure of the market because our organization focuses in government sector. In last two years e-learning activity has increased from the government sector, the government is trying to set up an important project on using ICT for education for rural areas. As a part of this project, the government had to buy computers for every school. However, the government has to realize that, providing equipments is not enough, learning content also has to be developed.The government at this stage is still trying to understand the whole concept of e-Learning and how to use the internet for education.Some organizations within government have also started e-Learning research and projects like the ‘Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology’ in schools. Lot of people are trying to understand the concept of content creation and trying to adopt SCORM standards.
What is the SCORM standard? What does SCORM standardize? It is often said that SCORM is still a specification and not a standard?
SCORM is an application profile standard. There are many levels of standards like specifications for applications, and the jury standard, standard accepted by international organization. SCORM is actually a practical specification that has to be issued by some authority that everyone accepts. But before that the private sector has to take the initiative, form a consortium and to write specifications for the products. Many small companies are coming together, but the big companies are still not sure.
The United States government has set up ADL- Advanced Distributed Learning Lab. ADL tried to find a formal specification that the government can use
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan : Dr. K M Ramanandhan, Kerala State Project Director, India
Can you mention the major interventions made under SSA programme in the state so far?
We made nearly 12 major interventions, of which most important is civil works. Almost 33 per cent of the plan outlay is for civil works, meant for construction of additional classrooms, new school buildings, inter-school compound wall, supply of free text books to all girl and SC/ST students. Additionally we give workbooks for class 4 to 7 in subjects like science and mathematics, which started in the current year.
There are hardly any out-of-school children in Kerala, the popular impression goes by this. What should be or is then SSA
Emphasizing the importance of Open Course Ware for Indian Education System : Professor Vijay Kumar, faculty member of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA
What is the philosophy of Open Course Ware (OCW)?
Open Course Ware (OCW) is about providing unfretted access to educational resources. From MIT’s perspective, one way to implement this kind of philosophy and vision is to make all its two thousand courses available on web for free. In that sense its not an MIT education as it does not give you a degree, but it provides you a ‘window’ to MIT education, a snap shot for what happens in MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), its courses, study notes etc.
Can Open Course Ware really transform higher education in India?
If you look at not just at MIT open courses but Open Course Ware consortium and the alliances that have been created around open education resources, it implies that there is real possibility of having a large amount of good education content available and if you do the right kind of things both technically and organizationally, this can be contextualised and localized to meet the educational needs of different sections. Thus, in terms of providing extensive excess to high quality resources, OCW and similar initiatives points to the opportunity to very good educational content being available worldwide.
The other part of the vision is that because it is a global initiative, and the fact that this content is not just MIT or the USA, it has the opportunity to bring high quality content from anywhere in the world. This including the fact that India participation in this movement can actually contribute content it this alliance and to this large global repository.
One thing I want to add here is that when you talk about the vision, it is also about India participating as a key player in the global knowledge economy. This vision is not just about content; this is about setting up a global community of content providers, content consumers or people who are interacting with each other in a global knowledge economy.
Would you elaborate a little further, can India really come into the picture as a content provider? Technology, do you see India becoming very big player in this whole movement?
Well, when we talk about OCW we have to remember two things, one is content itself and second thing is a model. It would be a wonderful for India to join OCW alliance and the OCW council. Various institutions in India have already expressed interests to participate. One way is, these organizations participate, so we have great initiatives like, Eklavya, which are already producing the key educational material whether video based, or others for consumption both within their institution or to put out to other institutions. Now, following the open model, one of the things you have to ensure is that they provide content in a consistent format, that is complete and that is easily sharable.
OCW produces complete courses. They are also able to take advantage of gaps in their offering by looking at the other offerings that are there and being able to leverage that. So when we talk about the India’s contribution to content, there are already initiatives that are creating content for utilizing the content which are being created for courses. So India can use the open courseware model to make its content widely available within India. It can participate in OCW alliance to not only take advantage of content it does not have, but to make some of its contents available to the world. So, there are the ways through which it can operate both as contributor of content as well as participant in this alliance.
Is the Indian government taking any concerted efforts on building this kind of movement or participating in this movement? What is the role of the Knowledge Commission in this?
The Knowledge Commission looks at access and quality of education as one of its key charges. It wants to provide really high quality education to meet the needs of the different sectors in the knowledge economy. So we are trying to see how can we leverage and improve current initiatives as well as initiate new ones in order to meet its ambition of providing quality and access to education.
The Knowledge Commission has a lot to do with content access, knowledge creation, knowledge dissemination and e-Governance, because if you look at the knowledge cycle from the creation to the consumption of knowledge, many things come in, and on of the main goal of the Knowledge Commission to really provide excellence in education and improve current structures to provide this kind of excellence.
Again as I said, when you think about India, where a major part of the population is under 25 years old, when you think about various reports that has come from NASSCOM or the Mackenzie report where they talk about the need of IT sector and service sector in 2005, you need knowledge workers in India. India with all its resources and brain power, we needs to make sure that we have the right structures to become a key player in global knowledge economy, even in cases where we have islands of excellence.
Do you see MIT collaboration with higher institutions in India?
Yes absolutely. It is happening now too through OCW alliance, i-Lab alliance. It happens through initiatives like this. There are individuals who also work or collaborative with individuals. When you talk about institutional kind of collaboration, we want to lead through good assets that we have like i-Labs, OCW projects like this, whole bunch of I- campus projects so what we want. We would like to look at how to enable and support adoption of some of the initiatives and have the players become participants. So works with the knowledge commission offers a very good opportunity to bring some of this initiatives, either directly or as models for India.
Do you see MIT doing any direct partnership with the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) or with state government ?
At this point I cannot say. There are only possibilities. We try to engage them. MIT is a big place, it has research labs, media lab, MIT faculty, there is a lot of collaboration going on. There are research collaboration going on between people in material science department with All India Institute of Medical Sciences and with what I am doing in OCW, and it is through these initiatives we are working together. So at this point there is no direct collaboration with either MHRD or any particular agency. So the unit that we are engaged with now is the National Knowledge Commission.
What are those new critical factors that are really important for any successful alliance say between MIT and any other institution around OCW?
Open courses rules are pretty simple. One, we want to make sure there is quality content and quality resources. We also want to make sure that it is available in the kind of format that it is accessible to the world. So both in terms of quality and the rules that surround the material, we have to realize that this quality that it is going to be available to the world. The world is going to say how good it is and the world has to see it.
The opportunities we see are immense but there must be some challeng
Quality is the challenge, quality is the concern : Dr Pavich Tongroach, Commission on Higher Education
What are the challenges of higher education in Thailand?
The challenges are same as everywhere in the world. In terms of manpower development we have to create manpower for the country who could push the society ahead. Hence we have to deliver good quality product. This is what the society expects from us. So quality is the main challenge in terms of human resource development and knowledge development, the research being either for basic knowledge or acquired knowledge
What is the policy focus of higher education in Thailand!
The policy is based on our situation. Thailand is doing quite well in terms of quantity. All together we have around 137 universities plus some other higher learning institutions so we have close to 200. This is a little too many for quite a small country. In terms of intake, we seem to be able to take care of all the demands coming from high schools. If all the students who qualify school are going to university, the chances are they will be accepted in university. However, the major concern is the quality. It does not mean we have problems with quality as such, but we have a wide range of quality, based on so many no universities. At the far end we have universities, which are ranked as world best and the others, which are trying to upgrade the academic curriculum.
Are the quality standards same for private and Government university? Is there any difference in the way they are enforced?
The standards are similar for private and Government Universities. The quality standard assurance agency is not very old. The agency has completely one cycle of 5 years of quality check, and is starting on the second cycle, which has more stringent rules for better quality.
How are ICTs being used in higher education in Thailand to build human resource that can become a part of the knowledge society and can address the challenges of globalization?
ICTs are being used extensively in higher education in Thailand. At the university level we give them freedom and independence to develop their own infrastructure. Its quite common that each lecturer will have his own website, academic department will have their own server which is a part of the campus network. At the national level our commission is running the inter-university network called the UniNet. UniNet is one of the strongest private network in the country. This is also linked to the international network in the US and its interconnection of universities in North America and also with the pacific network of universities. We have wide scope of potentiality to link internationally via the ICT.
Recently Thailand has come up with a very interesting and innovative initiative- the Thailand Cyber University. It
Future of technology in US education
The US education system has already made great strides toward equipping its institutions and classrooms with technology and this is set to continue.
The K12 sector is expected to increase its spending on ICT from US$5.1 billion in 2005 to US$6 billion in 2009, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.7%. Meanwhile, the higher education sector is expected to increase spending at a CAGR of 5.8%, from $4.7 billion in 2005 to $5.9 billion in 2009.
Egypt, Oracle ink MoU for education solutions
The Government of Egypt recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with 12 companies in the Oracle Consortium to provide ICT hardware, software, digital content and teacher development to secondary schools.
Egypt is the fifth country in Africa to commit to the new partnership for African development's (Nepad) e-Schools demonstration project, and joins Ghana in committing to the project under the auspices of the Oracle Consortium. The agreement forms part of the Nepad e-Schools demonstration project, a Nepad e-Africa Commission initiative. The project aims to establish six Nepad e-Schools in each participating country and monitor and evaluate their effectiveness in order to inform the broader rollout of the Nepad e-Schools Initiative across Africa.
Implementation by the Oracle Consortium the project will begin at three schools in March 2006. The consortium is led by Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, and consists of Mustek, Sentech, Ses Astra, Multichoice Africa, Intel, CompuTainer, Learnthings, Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, DHL, Xerox and Cambridge-Hitachi. The aim of the Nepad e-Schools Initiative is to provide ICT equipment, skills and knowledge to primary and secondary school students that will enable them to function in a knowledge economy; to improve health education; to enable teachers to use ICT as tools to enhance teaching and learning; and to provide school managers with ICT skills so as to facilitate efficient management and administration in the schools.
Online data for children and young people
A Children's Information Service (CIS) team has been out and about promoting its new online directory for children and young people. The Bexley directory is an information bank of children and young people's services available in the borough. The team encouraged as many people as possible to log on and take a look at the new facility, the first of its kind for Bexley.
This new directory holds a vast amount of information for anyone that works with or cares for children and young people. The search facility allows users to find exactly what they are looking for and the easy to understand guidance makes it completely user friendly. The CIS team has spent the past few months drawing information from a range of different services for the directory. The final version lists everything from out-of-school clubs and childminders to information for disabled children and sports activities. The CIS used technology pioneered by Leeds Council to develop the directory. Extensive work has gone into the new listings that were tested by young people, parents and carers before going live.
SANAKO launches mobile wireless IT classroom
SANAKO has introduced a fully mobile IT-based cross-curricular teaching solution – the Wireless IT-Classroom.
The mobile solution consists of a laptop cart complete with wireless access point and SANAKO Study 500 teaching software available for installation. Optional laptop PCs can be purchased from a preferred supplier. This ingenious Wireless IT-Classroom allows teachers to quickly and easily set up a modern IT-based learning environment in any space, even in ordinary classrooms with no IT facilities. In institutions with wireless environments, the laptop cart with PCs pre-programmed with Study 500 software can expand the reach of technology-based learning even further.
The cart itself can accommodate up to 24 laptops, and is compatible with nearly all of the products from leading laptop manufacturers. It comes equipped with power supply and security features and laptops must be outfitted with wireless network cards (WLAN 11g) to offer the optimal wireless connectivity for use with Study 500. Teachers can simply wheel the trolley into the desired teaching area, distribute laptops to students and IT-based teaching can begin – no need to wait for expensive and time-consuming furniture and hardware installation.
The wireless cart and teaching software allow Sanako and its partners to give educational institutions access to a complete solution for technology-based teaching, including cart, teaching software, wireless network and laptops, or any combination of elements as needed. This is the ideal solution for institutions that want to maximize their IT investments – the mobile laptop classroom can be readily shared among many teachers and learning groups in an easy and convenient fashion. Customers get an important bonus in being able to fully secure their mobile teaching environment with doors that lock independently.
SANAKO Study 500 is an inexpensive entry-level solution that creates a stimulating and interactive teaching environment, which makes use of Internet and IT resources to bring any lesson to life! It can be easily modified to meet specific teaching needs, simply by installing additional software modules that introduce supplementary learning or teaching activities.
