Chapter 10: School–Community ICT-Mediated Linkages: The Southeast Asian Experience

Since 1995, many countries have spent billions of dollars to bring information and communication technologies (ICT) into classrooms as part of school reform initiatives to change the way schools operate and the way students learn. The primary motivation for such investment is the belief that ICT supports students’ constructive thinking, allows them to transcend their cognitive limitations, and engages them in cognitive operations that they otherwise may not have been capable. In many of the Southeast Asian countries, master plans for ICT in education were launched to help schools integrate ICT into their curriculum and consequently to develop a culture of thinking, lifelong learning, and social responsibility. More recently, the initiatives have attempted to connect schools to their communities through ICT. Here we explore several case studies of such initiatives in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, and discuss the nature of the connections that are taking place and the benefits that have resulted from these initiatives.