Fuente: Bernama
Fecha: 12 de enero de 2005
Autores: Bernama

ICT Literacy Will Be As Essential As Print Literacy Now, Says Hishammuddin

KUALA LUMPUR , Jan 12 (Bernama) -- The enablement of students in Information Communications Technology (ICT) and the integration of ICT in education is not an option nor an essential add-on, but far greater than that, says Education Minister Datuk Hishammuddin Tun Hussein.

"It is far more than an augmenter of present ways of doing things because technologies of information and communication help structure what we can and cannot achieve in and beyond the classroom," he said in his speech at "The Moving Young Minds International Ministerial Seminar of Education Ministers" in London , Tuesday.

His speech text was faxed to Bernama here Wednesday.

The minister, however, said that the success rate for ICT empowerment initiatives taken by governments worldwide had been mostly dismal.

Studies have showed that most public sector ICT initiatives, especially in e-Government, have failed, he said at the meet which brought together 60 delegates from 30 countries, a quarter of them at ministerial level.

"There is a great upside to getting ICT for schools right, but it is hard to get it right. Failure is expensive because it will mean underused equipment, misspent funds.

"But the even greater cost of failure would be the opportunities lost to our children," he said.

The seminar was aimed at enabling a ministerial-level exchange of international views and perspectives on the impact of modern ICT on school age education.

In his speech themed, "A vision of the Future of ICT and the Challenges Facing Malaysia Schools ", Hishammuddin also spoke of the Malaysian government's strong commitment to minimising and preventing a digital divide.

Malaysia believes that the new information and communication technologies are essential both as a means of delivery of education and as the subject of study, he said.

Hishammuddin said Malaysia had taken many initiatives such as the Smart School Project, the supply of projectors and notebook computers to schools, computer labs and broadband connections to schools, among others.

"We are fully committed to the reshaping of our economy into a knowledge economy and will thus need a workforce skilled in ICT. We also see that in the near future ICT literacy will be as important as print literacy is today for the achievement of the rights and powers of democratic citizenship," he said.

Hishammuddin also said that the government was currently working hard at consolidating various ICT projects in the schools into a single unified initiative.

"We have learned that consolidation and indeed, the problem of implementing ICT, should not be viewed primarily as a problem of technology, but as a problem of management and of leadership," he said.