INTERNET FOR EDUCATION

Dr Lee Tsao Yuan asked the Minister for Education what is the current status regarding the use of the Internet for the teaching and transmission of educational material by educational institutions.

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Under the Masterplan for IT in education, the Ministry will install whole-school networking for all schools by next year. This will provide schools with good access to the Internet. At present, about 60 schools already have school-wide networks. The majority of the remaining schools, however, still have limited access points (about 10 points per school and at least 2 points for SingaporeONE).

Teachers and students use the Internet mainly to source for information, especially for project work. The Ministry helps schools by evaluating websites. Websites, which are relevant to the curriculum, are listed in the Ministry's Intranet, together with suggestions on how these websites could be used in the classroom.

While the Internet is an important resource, pupils are taught to be discerning on the factual correctness of the information downloaded from the web. In addition, they are also taught to synthesise the data instead of doing a cut-and-paste job when writing their project report.

The Internet provides new possibilities for technology-facilitated collaborative work. Many of our schools have participated in collaborative projects with pupils from other countries. They discuss issues and questions with one another through e-mail. Many of these projects culminate with the pupils creating and developing their own theme-based websites.

The Internet has also been used to disseminate information to schools. Some schools have set up their websites on the Internet and include educational resources for pupils to use.