Speech by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister for Education, at the Launch of the First Innovative Chinese Language Portal at Chung Cheng High School (Main), on Thursday, 6 April 2006, at 3.30 pm

SPEECH BY MR THARMAN SHANMUGARATNAM, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, AT THE LAUNCH OF THE FIRST INNOVATIVE CHINESE LANGUAGE PORTAL AT CHUNG CHENG HIGH SCHOOL (MAIN), ON THURSDAY, 6 APRIL 2006, AT 3.30PM

INTRODUCTION
1. It is a pleasure to be here with all of you for the launch of the first Innovative Chinese Language Portal, which is part of the overall Partners In Learning project of Microsoft Singapore. It is a happy result of a partnership between a few players - the Singapore Chinese Teachers’ Union; Microsoft Singapore and MOE’s Schools East Branch. It is a new milestone for Chinese Language teachers in Singapore.

LEVERAGING ON IT TO ENHANCE TEACHING AND LEARNING
2. Essentially, what we have in this portal is a virtual environment to facilitate new and innovative approaches by teachers themselves, to enhance the learning of the Chinese Language. It will initially be accessible by teachers in the East Zone and two clusters in the South Zone, before eventually being made available to all CL teachers.

3. This new portal will add momentum to the wave of innovations in CL learning that we are already seeing in our schools. Take for example Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ Secondary School, where students now make use of the school’s own CL portal to improve their CL oral skills. Through the portal’s internet audio system, the students can listen to and practise the passages selected by the teachers and read with good diction. Likewise, in Ngee Ann Secondary, teachers have been using software for cartoon design to inject fun into the learning of Chinese idioms. The cartoon characters generated help to captivate students’ interest in the meaning and origin of these idioms, as well as how to use them appropriately. Tanjong Katong Girls’ School is riding on the popularity of blogs. Its teachers get their students to participate in online “educational communities” where they share opinions and insights on current news topics. Their internet journals are administered by teachers, who also participate actively in the blogs. There are many other examples of school-based innovations in CL teaching and learning. What is inspiring about them is that they are created by teachers themselves. They are about teachers using their own imagination and inventiveness to devise strategies that they feel add value, not about schools simply adopting off-the-shelf technologies.

4. The exploitation of IT by our teachers is of course not something unique to Singapore. It is part of a global wave that has been taking place across various countries and education systems. However there is considerable interest in Singapore’s experience. Every time I meet my counterparts, in Malaysia and Thailand, or China or even in countries like Saudi Arabia, they want to study the Singapore experience in using IT in education and we are happy to share what we have learnt.

5. I think there are several reasons for this. First, we are infusing IT in teaching and learning in every school, right across our system, whereas in most other countries the meaningful infusion of IT is the privilege of a few schools - such as ‘experimental schools’ or ‘key schools’ in China or ‘smart schools’ in Malaysia, or private schools which draw on their own funding. Every school in Singapore gets the resources and support to initiate and sustain innovation. Every school is being given the advantages of “experimental schools” or “key schools” in most other countries. I don’t think this is an exaggeration.

6. Second, our focus is on teachers, not on hardware. Our emphasis is not on the PCs and laptops, or networks and bandwidth. We have also gone beyond mere passive use of CD-Roms or other packaged software. IT in schools is now being driven by teachers themselves - teachers intent on using IT the way they wish, to extend the scope of their students’ learning, to make their lessons more interesting, and to excite their students into learning more.

7. Technology is not innovation in itself. We all know that. What really matters is how teachers themselves use technologies and software to craft and deliver lessons, and push their students to learn in new and sometimes unplanned ways. That’s where the real value comes from when we use IT in education. For example, in Poi Ching Primary School, teachers make use of the school’s Chinese Language portal to retrieve poems, stories, video clips and activity cards for classroom activities. Students benefit from the use of two different mediums of text and video in learning Chinese passages. They discuss in class their thoughts about the similarities and differences of what they have learnt from the two different media representations.

BUILDING LEADERSHIP CAPACITY AND PLATFORMS FOR SHARING
8. With this focus on teachers, the Education Ministry has strengthened our efforts to strengthen professional development. We want to help our teachers integrate IT into teaching and learning in creative and unforced ways. IT cannot be forced. And one of the paradoxes of learning new techniques is that if you learn just a little of it, you tend to use the techniques in a forced way, a way that does not build on your own styles and strengths as a teacher. So we have to invest more in teacher development, so that teachers gain confidence in new teaching techniques that build on their strengths. That way, IT will become the 'smart-casual' of the teaching week, worn confidently and breezily, not the occasional formal dressing that we feel obliged to comply with.

9. The leadership capacity that we have started to build in schools for technology planning and evaluation will reflect our emphasis - not on IT per se, but on innovative teaching and learning. It means that IT Heads of Department will focus not just on IT, but will re-focus their roles as instructional leaders, working alongside subject Heads of Departments to promote the use of IT for real value.

10. In Chinese Language (CL) teaching, we already have positive experiences in use of IT, such as those which I have mentioned. We are encouraged by these successes. But this collaborative effort by the SCTU, Microsoft and MOE’s Schools East Branch will help bring the use of IT in the teaching of the Chinese Language to a new plane. I expect it will be a plane with greater networking and collaboration amongst teachers and even higher educational value than we have seen.

11. This initiative we are launching today also gels with MOE’s efforts to build communities of practice or ‘COPs’ as forums to promote sharing of ideas, creation of new techniques, and collegial support and mentoring for teaching professionals. Aside from face-to-face sessions, which remain the best way to share ideas, the launch of the Innovative Chinese Language Portal will provide common online platforms to enhance networking among teachers for the sharing of lesson plans. In addition, the Portal will have synergies with other Chinese Language initiatives, for example, the upcoming Chinese Language Centre of Excellence (COE) initiated by East Zone, spearheaded by Chung Cheng High (Main). The COE will complement this portal in helping teachers to leverage on one another’s experience in teaching the Chinese Language. I also understand that the portal will in time be linked to a similar Innovative Chinese Teachers’ Portal in China. It is altogether an exciting development, which can only bring benefits to our teachers.

MORE ACCESSIBLE, RELEVANT, AND ENGAGING KNOWLEDGE BASE
12. My congratulations to the Singapore Chinese Teachers’ Union, Schools East Branch, and Microsoft Singapore on their happy partnership, bearing fruit with this successful launch. I would like to specially commend Microsoft for venturing into this terrain of CL teaching with our schools. I encourage schools and teachers, including those from the other zones to make full and active use of this portal.

13. It gives me great pleasure to now declare open the first Innovative Chinese Language portal in Singapore.