This is the title of a HKU CITE seminar by Jenn-Jong Yee, CEO of ASKnLearn Pte Ltd

Here is the intro from the overview website:

Description:

About the Seminar
Singapore’s MOE has completed 11 years of ICT Masterplan since 1997. Since 2000, the InfoComm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore has also actively supported the development of a private sector to support ICT in education.
The speaker, being an active private sector service provider to the ICT in Education programmes in Singapore, will share his perspectives on these initiatives and how the private sector has successfully worked with schools to effectively use ICT for teaching and learning.
He will share examples of innovations by schools in their use of ICT.About the Speaker
Mr Jenn-Jong Yee is founder and CEO of ASKnLearn Pte Ltd, a key player in Singapore’s ICT in Education industry. ASKnLearn was founded in 2000 as a 4-man start-up and grew to its current strength of over 150 staff serving 180 educational institutions in Singapore and Asia.
ASKnLearn’s growth coincided with several key government education and technology programmes implemented in Singapore from 2000-2008. It currently supplies e-learning solutions and ICT training to 150,000 students in Singapore across some 35% of all Singapore government schools.
Mr Yee was formerly a teaching staff at the National University of Singapore and has also served in the government service before venturing into private businesses. He graduated with MSc in Computing and MBA in Banking and Finance.

Here are my notes from the seminar.

Talked of the humble beginnings of the company.

Started with a platform from a polytechnic and acquired a company from the National University of Singapore who had another learning platform in 2005. Grew from 4 staff in 200 to 150 by 2008.

They are very big! Taken over by Pearson Education.

The Singapore context:

Most schools in Singapore do cambridge exams.

30+ International Schools, few private schools. All Singapore schools teach in English.

Singapore like HK have had ICT in education plans.

The government in Singapore tenders everything. Even to the level of software purchase. It was all top down. The government appointed experts decided on everything.

Large scale ICT training for school teachers.

Partnered board for local content development.

Digital media repository, Data loggers for all schools.

At the end of phase one.

Basic skills for teachers, reasonably good IT network, abandoning of the single LMS, About40-50% schools using LMS. Schools want ready content, Encouraging results from some schools experiementing with new ideas in ICT and e-learning.

Next phase of Masterplan 2003-2008

• Flexible infrastructure (autonomy by schools)
• Integration of technology at planning phase of curriculum design.
• Resources for teachers to build customised lessons using reusable lessons and learning objects.
• Baseline ICT standards
• Active competitions for students and teachers.
• LEAD ICT Schools.
• Expanded role for HOD ICT
• Ed tech officers as advisors to clusters
• Emergency closure readiness-e-learning day simulations. (Great Idea!!)
• Backpack.NET
• Future Schools
• (Teach Less, Learn more)

THIS IS SOUNDING TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE! I CAN’T IMAGINE THAT SINGAPORE HAS GONE SO FAR AND HK IS SO FAR BEHIND.

At End of IT MP2

• 100% of schools use e-learning
• Teachers more comfortable with varieties of ways of making own content.
• 69 schools on LEAD ICT 6 schools selectied as Future Schools (Max 15)
• Close collaboration with InfoComm Development Authority
• Active actions research by schools and NIE
• Fulfillment of content for schools by industry, low key by MOE

Masterplan III now underway

• More experimentation with one-to-one computing
• A lot of continuation of MPII
• Improved bandwidth (Next Gen Broadband)
• Active links with NIE and other institutions for research in ICT in Education
• More active provision of content by MOE
• Unknowns: Centralised vs independent LMS & core content.

Key Influencers

IDA Since 2000

• lots of initiatives from them.

EDB (1997-2003)

• iLIUP

Went though the Industry Evolution.

• early startups.

• masterplan showed a growth due to the plan and the dot com boom
• Big mushrooming of companies
• second masterplan showed a drying up of providers.
• AnL went into content provision early seeing what the market would do.
• AnL went in with complete solutions.

Challenges for Schools

• Teachers not used to process of content/product development
• HOD becomming IT managers
• Understanding ICT effectively for T & L.
• Rapid technological changes
• How to drive usage acrss the board.
• Change of vendors relearning, content migration.

Onto a demo of some element from the portal asknlearn.com

Fairly typical learning objects.  A lot of these developed by the parent Educom company in India.

Shows the part of the portal where teachers author their own content.

Whoops time has run out!

I met for a coffee with JJ after the seminar.

He was very interested in knowing where international schools in the Asian region got the content to populate their VLEs. I had to say that the use of VLEs was, to my knowledge, quite embyonic in International Schools in the region. I have had direct experience of a few installations which have mostly static content and youtube videos. I was not aware of Portals in use in IS that have whole courses online linked to flash content. I know of one school who is looking into this at the moment.

I would love some comments from others.  Please let me know if you have a Portal/VLE that students can access with rich media content. From where has the content come? Have teachers developed or tracked it down themselves?