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Essay 2

To prepare students for the 21st Century do you think Malaysia is ready for the changes of
students textbooks to electronic medium? Discuss your opinions.


Many schools around the world are starting the revolution of swapping printed textbooks
with e-textbooks. If Malaysia was to join this digital revolution, this would be another change at
a massive scale. To give an idea of how much is at stake, the Terengganu government has
already spent RM100 million to provide 92,224 units of e-books for primary school students
since 2007 (The Star 20 November 2011). The total number of students in both primary and
secondary schools as of 31 Jan 2013 is 5,042,906 (Ministry of Education 2013), 50 times the
number of the e-book recipients. A conservative estimate of the same project would push the
budget required to RM5 billion.
As more nations start guring out their plans to incorporate tablets into their classrooms,
it may soon be time for Malaysia to do the same. Near the end of the writing of this paper,
Google announced on their blog, plans by the Malaysian Education Ministry to adopt
Chromebooks and Google Apps as their solution to digital classrooms. The move will probably
bank on Google Apps for Education and YouTube Edu which are already used in top universities
as well as 500 schools in the US (Yeung 10 April 2013) and a help from Frog Asia, which is part
of YTL Communications. Frog Asia provides the learning platform while YTL communications
is providing 4G Internet connections for the 10,000 schools under the 1BestariNet project. The
move was a result of a year-long of roundtable discussions, focus groups and interviews
involving 50,000 people (Google 2013) although there was no mention of whom were involved
in the talks.
Although there are still many students do not have the opportunity to enjoy the internet,
especially in rural areas, but as a student of the 21st century they should take the opportunity
wisely to obtain information on the electronic medium or internet. The information revolution
that will create the Information Age will bring dramatic changes across the board and to the way
we live, work and way of seeing the world in a global setting.
Our country has been successful will see the emergence of 21st century students are
influenced by the generation of knowledge and information. Advances in computer technology
will in fact ensure that the information revolution will affect our lives in a more profound and
comprehensive. There are several advantages of learning using the Internet:
Learning opportunities through the Internet more open and spacious nature because it is
not subject to a specific location, but it covers the whole world. The Internet also provides the
space and the learning and sharing of information to professionals in specific fields, such as
engineering, medicine, pharmacy, technology, computers, etc. Medium electronic facility is also
enrich the information resources that were once only offered by conventional methods, namely
books, magazines, newspapers, certain articles, journals and newsletters.
Through the Internet, these resources are also available in the form of the World Wide
Web. Such resources are usually provided by the higher education institutions, bodies thinkers
and research in a particular field. It is not only as a reference for students of schools, colleges and
universities, but it is also the benefit of all the people who are interested. The electronics
medium also provides a software or an application called search engine to facilitate your search
for a specific topic. Even so, need some skill in using search engines to ensure that the right
information can be obtained.
However, the implementation of technology in the teaching and learning should be used
with caution, despite the positive claims and enthusiasm. Ravenscroft (2001: 134), for example,
argues that we cannot truly transform educational practice for the better through using new
technologies unless we examine the roles the computer can play in truly stimulating, supporting
and favoring innovative learning interactions that are linked to conceptual development and
improvements in understanding (cited in Nichols, 2003: 4).
In the 21st century, the internet offers a variety of information for learning purposes.
Cyberspace is wide open for exploration knowledge. What is important is this information to be
processed and analyzed in order to get the maximum possible benefit.

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