By Murniati Abu Karim - December 4, 2019

Outstanding teachers and schools nationwide were honored for their efforts in adopting technology and raising the bar in 21st century education at the YTL Foundation Awards Night recently.

The awards, organised in collaboration with FrogAsia, acknowledged those who have transformed education and made extraordinary contributions in school administration as well as community engagement.

Exemplary educators were given recognition through the Frog Teachers Awards, Frog World Championships, Global School Leaders Malaysia Awards, Tan Sri Yeoh Tiong Lay Transformational Awards, Puan Sri Kai Yong Yeoh Book Prize and YTL Foundation Schools Awards.

The Frog Teacher Awards winner for the Gamechanger in Edutech category, Mohd Fadzli Ishak hoped to inspire more teachers to go the extra mile for the sake of educating the future generation.

A strong advocate of education technology, the Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Bukit Indah in Nusajaya, Johor teacher revealed that his pupils look forward to learning when he integrates technology into it.

“Pupils nowadays learn differently. The use of technology allows teachers to be more creative in the classroom while providing an exciting learning experience for the pupils.

“Despite my pupils being in primary school, I decided to introduce basic coding to them. As a result, they managed to do their own coding and so became inspired to be digital creators,” he said.

Mohd Fadzil added that this type of exposure is needed to produce future-ready learners, those that are ready for digital learning.

Kamariah Awang of Sekolah kebangsaan Gong Balai in Marang, Terengganu clinched the Most Exceptional Educator category under the Frog Teacher Awards.

For Kamariah, her pupils are her inspirations.

“The kids always have new ideas when it comes to activities that we can do in the classroom. Their enthusiasm to learn is what keeps me motivated.

“I believe that learning is experiencing. In my lessons, I try my best to involve the pupils in the process. For example, we carried out Skype sessions with other schools across the globe to inculcate cultural awareness and understanding of others’ traditions and values.

“We also went to multiple class trips to provide the kids with real world experiences,” she added.

Meanwhile, Sekolah Menengah Ampang Pecah, Selangor was awarded RM20,000 in grant money under the YTL Foundation Schools Awards for its compelling and sustainable proposal to create change in the school community.

Saemah Sahir, who teaches basic Computer Science at the school, said the school carried out the #eratperpaduan campaign throughout the year to foster unity, improve inter-racial interactions and establish greater understanding among the school community.

Present at the award-giving ceremony were FrogAsia executive director Yeoh Pei Lou and YTL Foundation programme director Datin Kathleen Chew.

In her opening speech, Chew said that teaching is a noble profession that shapes character and calibre and contributes to the future of an individual. However, not many realise the sacrifices teachers have to make to ensure that students are learning at their full potential.

“Teachers are the backbone of our society because they are educators for the nation. Hence, every year, we celebrate these teachers for their efforts and dedication in elevating the education standards in Malaysia.

“We want to celebrate those who have worked hard behind the scenes to propel their students forward and have seen the fruit of their labour.

“Teaching is a challenging profession as educators deal with different kinds of students, requiring them to be dynamic and agile in using different teaching approaches. It takes special individuals to achieve excellence in this career,” Chew added.

Source: https://www.nst.com.my/education/2019/12/544720/ytl-awards-teachers-and-schools-adopting-technology-education

The refresher workshop for teachers at SMK Pudu is to share the 21st Century Learning technique to the teachers that can be implemented in the classroom. This enabled the teachers to utilize those technique onto the Frog VLE for CL-Cloud effectiveness.

We initiated the sticker rewards system to attract the interest of our students and by doing so, we want our students to feel appreciated when they are awarded with one.

We added more equipment to enhance our 21st Century Learning within our school. Every equipment are carefully selected and compatible with Frog VLE programming to conduct the CL-Cloud Program. Through this, we are able to prepare a comprehensive learning modules for our students to have fun while learning. For example, the Rotating Station that combines both games and learning, allow student to use their analytical skills while practicing their computer skills.

To nurture the growing interest in technology among the students, the school board with the collaboration of the Parents Teachers Association (PTA) decided to take a proactive action. This include equipping the school with necessary gadgetry and encourage a conducive learning environment which is line with the nation's Linus Enrichment Program.

We also invited SK Sega, SMA Dato Klana Maamor and SK LB Johnson to our school for a sharing session. We talked about the benefits of Frog Classroom have on the students and the technologies that comes with it. The outcome is meant to instill the interest among the teachers to start integrating technologies in their own classroom.

Digital Teachers Programme are meant for teachers of SK Ampangan to undergo training, and exposure of the importance of the 21st Century Learning. The outcome is to prepare the teachers with the necessary knowledge and the readiness to use technologies in their classroom.

Our school also worked together with the youth, PTA, the community and school personnels to transform our schools to a 21st Century Learning space. In doing so, we encourage self-learning attitude among the students.

PUFFS (Project Using Frog for Students) Course

were implemented by phases and divided into smaller groups. The objective of PUFFS is to enhance the usage capabilities of Frog VLE among students and also the teaching community. The participants are expected to integrate Frog VLE widgets and by the end of the course, they are expected to create a website.

PDPC website building

To really measure the effectiveness of the course, the groups are tasked to build a website. The groups are given enough time to build it before moving on to the next phase of the course.

T-shirts for the PUFFS teams

to instill the togetherness among the group members to undertake the difficult tasks of building their own website, we want to do print something that is meaningful to them. By doing so, they can encourage each other since some of the students actually complained about the difficulty to create website. Also, a wearable apparatus and in this case, a T-shirt could promote the importance of Frog VLE among students when are worn in school.

Management Training for Teachers

Digital Classroom Workshops

Before we start teaching our students to use the Frog VLE efficiently, we need to equip our teachers with the necessary skills to integrate Frog VLE in their lesson. So we had Frog VLE trainings for teachers to really brush up their knowledge. Furthermore, our teachers can be well-verse in using Digital Ink and EDU Apps in the classroom to complement the usage of Frog VLE.

Equipping our classroom with LED Screen to enhance the learning experiences. Teachers used the screenbeam with YES connectivity to connect to the LED screen, so that students can stay engaged throughout the class. We allocated between 5 to 10 minute to play songs, short stories, or even educational videos that are available on the internet.

Coding

Our students gets their first-hand coding experiences from the great people of Politeknik Kuala Terengganu. We work closely with them and they have been a great assistance to teach the students with basic coding skills, PHP and HTML.

Communicative English

Students' Visume

With great pointers and tips on how to produce a visume from PKG Raja, our students are so excited to have their own visume up on the YouTube.

Young TOEFL GO English Project

Country ETS Representative for TOEFL, Ezani Amir worked with us to show important guidelines to our students and guided them how to produce a time capsule using English language.

Outdoor Day Camp

Foxrisers, our school youth movement and Tema2starters organized an outdoor camp day at Bukit Keluang Beach. The objective of the day camp is to allow the students take part in the communal work while practicing English as a day-to-day conversational language. The event is a success and we hope similar events will happen in the near future.

Entrepreneurship Classes

To inspire our students and the prospect of career advancement, we invited Mentor Razali Mohammad from Pelaburan Saham Malaysia to our school compound to gave a talk on financial skills, trading and the financial market. Active questions and answers took place after the lecture, we're glad that our students are thrilled with the event.

Another initiative to inspire entrepreneurship among of our students, we invited the Corporate Executive Al-Ikhsan Sports, Mr Muhammad Alif Ismail to our school to share his executive role, his business idea and Al-Ikhsan entrepreneurial success story.

By Content Curator - November 22, 2017

YTL Foundation today announced the five schools that will be receiving a RM20,000 grant each in the inaugural edition of the YTL Foundation Schools Awards which was launched earlier this year for schools with Frog Classrooms. The grants support schools in building innovations in teaching and learning, building learning communities, and building learning environments that promote 21st Century skills.

“We are very pleased to see the enthusiasm of the schools and the high quality of the proposals we received in this inaugural YTL Foundation Schools Awards. Although only five awards were awarded this year, we hope that all schools will keep up their passion and apply again in the next edition of the awards. At YTL Foundation, we firmly believe in the importance and value of 21st Century teaching and learning methods and we are excited to see how the individual schools are creatively proposing the application of these methods to address the unique local needs and challenges in each of their schools,” said Datin Kathleen Chew, Programme Director of YTL Foundation.

“This awards programme is also in line with our ongoing work in partnership with the Ministry of Education Malaysia and other partners to expand access to 21st Century learning in Malaysia. The Government acknowledges the importance of ensuring that all schools derive optimal benefit from 21st Century learning and they are catalysing change with initiatives such as the allocation of RM190 million in Budget 2018 to upgrade 2,000 classrooms for 21st Century learning. This awards programme is just one more small effort that we have rolled out towards achieving our mutual goal of ensuring 21st Century learning for all,” she added.

The five recipients of the augural batch of the award grants are SK Ampangan, Negeri Sembilan; SMK (P) Pudu, Kuala Lumpur, SMK Bandar Baru Salak Tinggi, Selangor; SMK Tengku Mahmud 2, Terengganu and SK Seri Bayu, Perak.

Schools were required to submit a detailed plan which included a budget, timeline and expected outcomes. The proposals needed to focus on how the schools were to improve one or more of these key supporting areas of 21st Century Learning: Leadership & Culture, Operations, Teaching & Learning, Content, Professional Development and Technology. The proposals received were assessed based on a holistic set of criteria which included practicality, sustainability, creativity and potential impact on 21st Century learning in the school.

Speaking at the awards event held at SK Ampangan in Seremban, the school’s Headmaster Tuan Haji Hamzah bin Hj Koleh said, “At SK Ampangan we firmly believe in the importance and value of 21st Century teaching and learning. We appreciate this awards initiative by YTL Foundation, which provides an opportunity to schools nationwide to earn funding for their initiatives by having feasible and sustainable plans. We will certainly make use of the grant in the most efficient way possible to elevate teaching and learning at our school, and we are all looking forward to reaping the benefits of this improvement.”

Disbursement of the grant funding will be done in two stages – RM15,000 will be awarded to the recipient schools to fund the rollout of the proposed improvements, while the remaining RM5,000 will be disbursed to the schools after the completion of the project as outlined in the winning proposal.

The Frog Classroom Programme – an initiative by YTL Foundation in collaboration with FrogAsia, provider of the Frog VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), aims to transform classrooms throughout Malaysia into 21st Century learning spaces that promote technology-enabled, student-focused learning. Frog Classrooms are equipped with 4G Internet, Chromebooks that provide access to the Frog VLE, as well as the programme’s hallmark curved tables, which are designed to create more opportunities for peer-led learning and interaction. Students are guided in honing 21st Century learning skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, decision-making, collaboration and cooperation, as well as soft skills like communications.

Schools interested to submit entries in next year’s YTL Foundation Schools Awards as well as corporations keen to support the programme can visit www.ytlfoundation.com for more information and to see the latest announcements. Only schools that have never received the YTL Foundation Schools Awards are eligible to receive an award.

Source: http://www.newstream.asia/community/inaugural-ytl-foundation-school-awards-announces-five-schools-recipients/