Developing Smart School System In Algeria Education Essay

1- Introduction:

The development of information technology and communication (ICT) has become one of the important parts in Algeria society, and they cannot ignore the role it plays in the community. Because there is no doubt that ICT integration into the communication and information society is a fact cannot be ignored (Khenak, 2010 ). Nowadays, utilization of ICT has changed the communication style between the people whether it is in their nature of work or the process of production and consumption patterns. This matter summoned to take into account Algeria education policies and systems to develop them. The developed countries have made quantum leaps in the field of using the information technology and communication (ICT) in education (Hashmi, 2009), both in use as attached as teaching material to use it as management of education process or as a teaching / learning.

Malaysia is one of the developed countries that use the ICT tools in the education process. Whereby the government of this country takes it as one of the parts of its development strategy that is called vision 2020 (wawasan 2020). It includes the systems that can offer the information gathering, manipulation, communication and access to various forms. Besides, Malaysia smart school is considered as one of the famous programs that Malaysia applied. It comes from their belief that ICT is the key to make learning enable to imparting to all segments of society (MCS, 2005). Huns, this experience that Malaysia got in the education development, especially the smart schools system may will be a suitable model to apply the education reforms in Algeria. In so doing, in this study will focus on the Malaysia smart school as a model to produce some results to apply it in the education system of Algeria, which is under reform process.

2- Problems statement:

So far the learning and teaching operation in Algeria rely on traditional process, which are based on the common three pillars which are information and pupils ( students) and teachers. Thus, despite we believe that these three pillars are very important in this operation because their advantageous cannot be found by other substitution; this traditional process has some problems such as

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student’s number in Algeria is about a quarter of the population, spread on over 23.000 school. Whereby, in the primary and middle schools it can be about 38 pupil in one class, and in the high school it is about 35 student, which means the teachers cannot teach all of them easily due to the charge inside classes (Bohafsi, 2008);

the revolution of knowledge has produced the complexity of education, which make the government of Algeria face many difficulties and threats to deal with it (Bohafsi, 2008).

Furthermore, although Algeria has a good coverage of ICT as it is shown in table 1,and even thought Algeria has started in a good project which is called OSRATIC since four years (2006); this project aims to make every family from six million family in Algeria has at least one PC (Nazim, 2006), and despite the ministry of education in Algeria is preparing to enable an ICT environment to all Algeria’s schools and connect them to the internet (ADSL); it has no clear vision to use this tools for developing the teaching/learning system, whereby ICT policy remained limited to administrative process and using it for teacher training (Amr, 2007).

Moreover, even though, the private schools have their own systems to teach the student, the government of Algeria has narrowed on them in this side, whereby they must follow the programs and educational system of public schools (Aminah, 2005), which make the utilization of ICT tools is very difficult, it is restricted on some tools like data show for presentation, PC on each classroom. This matter make innovation is impossible to develop their programs using ICT tools. So far, they even have no web sites.

Table 1: ICT in Algeria (Amr, 2007)

Therefore a need of adoption a new educational system is required may to be as solution for these issues.

3-Research objectives:

The main objective of this study is

to identify the weaknesses of Algeria public/ private schools in ICT utilization;

to determine the requirements of smart school system in Algeria;

to identify a model for a smart school in Algeria;

3- Scope and limitation of study:

This study only concentrates on the construction of a middle smart school model in Algeria; and it will base on Malaysia experiences in this field, in order to it is considered as one of the pilot experiences in the application of this system, and to make a society capable to be developed in scientific innovation and looks to the future starting schools.

4- The significance of study:

This study maybe will help the education ministry to find a good vision for the schools in Algeria; also it will helps to benefit from the technology revolution. Because, this country still has no visions to make schools imitate the developed countries schools, especially it has a good infrastructure of technology like internet high speed (ADSL), and fiber optic lines at anywhere, they cover all Algeria stats. Furthermore, this study maybe will helps to find a vision or strategy for the society to use the ICT tools rightly in their location without need to waste the time for seeking the knowledge, whereby, this study maybe will motivate the ministry of education to make programs to aware the community by the benefit of this technology using the government policies in this field. As well as, this study maybe will be first steps to learn from the others experiences in the fields they made a advanced leaps in them, and it will courage the researchers to make a similar research to develop this vital sector in Algeria.

5- Literature review:

5-1 Country profile:

(Arab de, 1999)According to Arab German Consulting, Algeria is Islamic country, it is located on the northwest Africa, bordered to the east by Libya and Tunisia, to the north by Mediterranean Sea, to the south by Mali and Niger, and by Morocco and Mauritania to the west. In the term of land area it is the second largest country in after Sudan. Its area is 2,381,741 sq km. its official language is Arabic, but the society still mixes between Arabic and French in their communication, especially in business and administrative transactions. According to January 2009 estimations the populations are about 35,190,000 people.

5-2 Educational system of Algeria:

The education system of the public schools in Algeria bases on 2 levels fundamental school and Secondary school. The fundamental study is compulsory and consists of two levels primary education for five years and middle school for four years. The secondary education is also compulsory and divided to three branches : vocational /technical, specialize, and general for three years and at the end of this level there is Baccalaureate examination. The successful students in this examination will complete their studies in the universities (Amr, 2007) . Regarding the private schools, the ministry of education has obliged them to follow the same programs that are already programmed for the public schools (Aminah, 2005).

5-3 ICT and education in Algeria:

Like most developing countries Algeria has installed ICT technologies with the hope to make the educational system better and to get a best efficiency of management at all levels, also to introduce ICT in educational system as a new policy to the society (Hepp, 2003). Nowadays, the Algerian government has allowed the ministry of post and informatics to install the national ICT policy and manage it. Furthermore, to enhance this policy it has made collaborations with some international agencies like World Bank in 2002; see table 1. And make the entry into the information society the government has designed some projects to achieve this goal (Amr, 2007), like

project for Education to equip the schools of Algeria with PCs by 2005,

project to facilitate the distance education,

project to establish the internet platform under name Djaweb.

osratic program which aims to make every family in Algeria has at least one PC (see http://www.ousratic.dz/) (Mohamme, 2006).

As well, the government has adopted some initiatives to improve a good quality of education, as instances there are some of these initiatives (Mohand, 2009).

To support e-learning the government has facilitated the public-private partnerships.

Support any contribution to improve e-learning resources.

Working to promote virtual institutions and education per distance.

Preparing to establish a national ICT centre of excellence.

The following table shows the factors influencing adoption

Table 2: Factors influencing ICT Adoption (Amr, 2007) .

5-4 Malaysia smart school:

Smart school is the famous project that Malaysia has established to enhance the education for achieving more competent level. This establishing is to make Malaysia a center of education center excellence and has a world standard (Balkisnah & Norhasni, 2009). It was started in July 1997 in order to capitalize on leading-edge technologies and prepare student for the information age and maximize their individual skills and guide them to become self-learners using IT-integrated schools (NG, Kamariah, Samsilah, Wong, & Petri, 2005). Furthermore, 90 smart schools have been established in Malaysia in 2005 and the government have planned to prepare 300 schools to be converted into smart schools by supporting them by ICT tools and enhancing student self-learning, as well as this concepts active construction of knowledge creative and critical thinking. By other word smart school is an ambitious program; it aims to avoid the conventional pedagogy, which based on teacher-centred learning, memory-oriented learning, and facts acquisition (NG, Kamariah, Samsilah, Wong, & Petri, 2005).

5-5 The phases (waves) of establishing the Malaysia smart school:

There are four phases to convert all Malaysia schools into smart schools:

1st phase – The Pilot (1999-2002): Implementation on 87 schools.

2nd phase – The Post-Pilot (2002-2005): Lessons learned from the Pilot.

3rd phase – Making All Schools Smart (2005-2010): Extending the digital transformation to all.

4th phase – Consolidate and Stabilize (2010-2020): Technology becomes an integral part of the nation’s learning process (MCS, 2005).

5-6 The components of establishment Malaysia smart school:

The integration of smart school in Malaysia involved several components; these components made it achieve its goals; they can be listed on the following points:

Browser-based of TL Materials with their related print materials for both language English and Malaysia, and for mathematics and science.

Computerizing the management system of smart schools.

The infrastructure technology of smart school involving the use of IT and non-IT tools, LAN networks for the pilot schools, a virtual private network to connect these schools, the data center and help desk of ministry.

Support services in ministry help desk to provide support and maintenance.

Particular services like project management, system integration, change management, and business process engineering (Chen, 2002).

Furthermore, the ministry of education has planned to make all Malaysia schools have the IT necessary tools by this year 2010. Such as Local area network, broadband access, school administrative work has between 1-3 computers, preparing the laboratory by a least 20 computers, LCD projector, scanner, printer, digital camera, and laptops for the teachers (MCS, 2005).

5-7 The parts of Smart school management:

The main objectives of smart school management are to facilitate the resource management efficiently and effectively, also to support the teachinglearning functions. These functions are classified into nine fields which are described as followed:

School Governance: This part deals with the school policies, whereby it ensures a good communications between stakeholders and related agencies.

Student Affairs: This part deals with the student welfare and teachinglearning needs, also it save a complete database of student records.

Educational Resources: It is related to managing the resources database of teachinglearning that is accessed by teachers and students.

External Resource: It is related to managing the resources database that is applicable and relevant to teachinglearning scenario in schools.

Finance: It handles the portion of economic in this management system. It consists of a complete and comprehension accounting system direct interface to the District Education Office and the State Education Department.

Facilities: This part manages the utilization of the facilities. I consists of a records of inventories and it is able to track the removable assets movement.

Human Resource: This part includes a Human Resource Management System controls the development programs of individual staff member.

Security: To provide a human safety and physical safety the system needs a proper authorization or identification to access into databases of schools.

Technology: It manages the technology tools of the schools and comprises IT resources management and IT hardware, technology designs upgrading, and network (Malaysia government, 1997).

6- Methodology of study:

This study focus on application of knowledge and the management in Malaysia smart school, to produce required results to make a new educational system modal for Algeria that may be adopted as a new vision for developing this sector which may can benefit the students/ teachers and make them follow the technology age.

This section refers to the methods and the research design which will be described, and the research tools that will be discussed in the methodology by collecting the data and classifying it in a set of research phases. The research problem that has mentioned to it before will be solved by following methodology that it presented in figure 1. The methodology of this study will adapted from general methodology steps which include awareness of problems, than suggestion, followed by development, evaluation, and finally conclusion of study (Vaishnanavi & Kurersher, 2007).

Figure 1: Methodology steps of research (adapted from Vaishnanavi & Kurersher, 2007).

6-1 Specification of problems:

This part makes us understand the needs of research can be generated by the literature on the last developments in the area and industries. The proposal is the estimated outcome of this step (Norshuhada & Shahidan, 2010). This part involves the understanding the research domain which is smart school utilization fields of Malaysia smart school system and the possibility of applying it in Algeria, it is allows to determine what smart school system needs as requirements to formulate a clear vision to establish it effectively based Malaysia experience in this field.

6-2 Identification of participants of study:

The human participants is strongly involved in the research study (Marczyk, David, & David, 2005), and if the researcher cannot be able to make his study in the all population, he can select representatives of this population (Marczyk, David, & David, 2005). Therefore, this study will select samples of students and teachers that are under the middle school system in Algeria. The student will be selected from 3 middle schools; their ages are between 13 and 15 years from deferent levels, as well as their teachers. This sample contains at least 40 teachers and students.

6-3 Data collection:

Collecting data for Malaysia smart schools

Because of this study is about adopting the Malaysia smart school to make a new vision to develop Algeria educational system, it compulsory to know how Malaysia smart school functions and what are the elements of this system and how it has been established successfully in Malaysia. So that, to collect these data it is needed to look for them in official documents and web sites of this system.

Collecting data for issues and weaknesses of ICT support in Algeria middle schools

About Algeria’s middle school system function and weaknesses will be known from the various sources post books, journals, reports, conferences articles, web sites, papers. Furthermore, this study will look for the required data in the official documents in Algeria like official journals of education ministry and government which are related to this field. Also, the information will be gathered in the literature review and they will cover all the aspects of this study.

Moreover, it will be a questionnaire accorded to Sekaran (2000) reformulated. It will include a set of questions about how the students of middle school in Algeria will behave and deal with this system, and the teachers as well. It is obviously a good way to collect data when the researchers know precisely what information is needed (Sekaran, 2000). The responses will be gathered via communication by email and Skype with a trustful teacher which can gather the responses there.

6-4 Data analysis:

In this part it will be a process to analysis the data, descriptive statistic of the questionnaire results to summarize and describe the results of the students and teachers responses. This process will be proceeding by SPSS which the famous program to make the statistics. In addition, the flow chart of this questionnaire will follow chart steps of David S and Walonick; whereby, each step in the diagram depends to the successful completion of all the previous steps (David, 2004). These steps presented on the figure 2. As well as, all the questionnaires will be measured using Likert scale format (John & Jimes, 2000)

Figure 2: follow diagram of questionnaire (David, 2004).

6-5 Model construction

This step will be based on what will be collected by the previous steps to make a future vision about the model that will be adopted as a platform to construct a new Algeria educational system basing on Malaysia smart school. Whereby, after knowing all the aspects of Malaysia experiences in this field, basing on what we will gathers as data from sources, the model vision of smart school will be ready to formulate, by giving the suggestions and the ideas to improve ICT support in this model.