Week 3 Assignment: IT Educational Policy In China

The Chinese government believes that modernization of education
by applying information technology is essential in order to produce
students who can be competitive in the information era. The process
of introducing and integrating information and communication
technology (ICT) application into the education system is referred
to as educational “informationization” – something the Chinese
government is giving a great deal of attention to.

The actions being undertaken by the government and
schools include the following:
1. Constructing infrastructure needed for an information environment;
2. Developing educational resources;
3. Encouraging computer education;
4. Supporting teacher professional development; Integrating ICT into traditional classrooms;
5. Delivering good educational resources into rural areas using ICT-assisted distance education methods;
6. Changing administration systems through ICT applications.

Long-term Goals for Chinese Educational Informationisation
The aim is to meet the following goals by 2010:
1. ICT-based infrastructure which covers the whole country will be set up;
2. ICT education will be popularised in the most places;
3. The competence of ICT application for all Chinese citizens will be improved;
4. There will be enough ICT specialists to meet social development needs;
5. A lifelong education system will be in place; Software producing centres and ICT corporations will be operational;
6. The general level of infrastructure development and ICT application in education will rank at the top level among developing countries;
7. For universities, and for 85 per cent of the technical/vocational schools and primary and secondary schools in the developed area of China, the level of infrastructure development and ICT application will match that of developed countries.


Main Tasks and Relative Policies
To realise these goals, the Chinese government has developed policies and plans as follows:
1. Increase the bandwidth of the main lines of China Education and Research Network (CERNET),
extend coverage towards the West and include small cities;
2. Enhance the province and city networks of CERNET in order to supply good quality service to all kinds of education institutes with 2.5 Gbps bandwidth;
3. Construct a wide band satellite-based network (CEBsat) and combine that with Internet (CERNET) in order to supply multiple information transmission services for the entire country, particularly remote and rural areas;
3. Enhance university campus network construction, particularly in the western part of China, and develop a digital information platform to support an e-library, an information management system and a distance education system;
4. Enhance campus network construction in primary and secondary schools, particularly in village areas, launch the course ICT Education in most of schools and integrate ICT into the curriculum of middle technical/vocational schools;
5. Improve education administration informationisation by constructing platforms for officials, resources and public information;
6. Increase the number and quality of ICT specialists to spread ICT education in primary and secondary schools, to train teachers in information literacy and to provide inservice training about information literacy for adult and vocational students;
7. Facilitate sharing of teaching resources in order to improve the quality of education by developing a distributed education resource platform;
8. Launch research on second generation networks and conduct trials in selected central cities;
9. Develop policies regarding education enterprises that will encourage more financial investment and support development of ICT corporations;
10. Develop quality standards for education informationisation and use them to develop evaluation systems.

Reference:
Ms Chen li Ph.D. Policy goals and Implementations.

To know more about education in China, please click the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Peoples_Republic_of_China

To know more about IT or ICT (information and communication technology) policy and the recent development of CATE (computer and advanced technology in education) in China, please follow the link:
http://www.iasted.org/conferences/cfp-570.html