Have you experienced WawasanLearn as part of your experience with this University? If you have not, you should. WawasanLearn is referred to as a learning management system (LMS) in all of our University's literature. Learning management systems are not unique to our university; it is fairly common in most Malaysian universities and colleges but may not be the case in our school system. The LMS is an example of a computer managed instruction (CMI) system. It has been around for a while, gaining popularity in use as sophisticated computers and software to support them became cheaper and easily available.

The early beginnings of CMI can be traced back to Stanford University (1967) with various developments remaining a side stream activity till the late 70s, and becoming more or less mainstream as part of higher education in the early 90s.  There is no single definition that describes CMI comprehensively. At the end of this section I have put together a short power point presentation summarizing what we know about CMI that you may wish to view.

A comprehensive account of CMI is presented in Chapter 5 (pp 103- 141) of Poole and E. Sky Mclivan's Education for an Information Age. The chapter is about how the tools of computing are used to support and provide learning objectives, learning resources, assessment of learning performance as well as tracking student progression. It is an aid in the classroom. In all likelihood many of you will be familiar with a number of tools (both hardware and software) mentioned in this chapter. What we will do in this section is to highlight those aspects of CMI technologies that have a special value for learning, teaching and administering  activities.

"Good tools do not make a good teacher, but a good teacher makes use of good tools". While the teachers of yesteryear had blackboard, chalk, flip charts and overhead projectors, today's teachers have available an arsenal of tools that help to increase productivity, save time and relieve overburdened teachers with some leisure time.  The chapter presents the CMI story in two parts. The first is about tools that assist productivity and the second about other applications that assist in matters of curriculum, content, assessment, planning and communication between school and home. Before we continue, list 4 or 5 ‘computing tools' that you have personally used as a teacher and the purpose for using them.

Productivity tools

The Ministry of Education Malaysia has continuously invested in providing computing technologies to almost all national type schools in the country. The Government has also provided free personal computers to thousands of teachers and invested in both formal training of teachers to use computers both as tools to improve pedagogy and productivity. Such investments are part of the strategy to ensure that Malaysian teachers benefit from the capacities of computing by increasing productivity and students from quality of improved instruction. As you have read in the Malaysian case studies presented in Unit 1, our track record on realising the full potential has been somewhat modest for a variety of reasons. We are not the only country that suffers from these shortcomings. In pages 104 and 105 of Chapter 5 the authors Poole and Mclivan allude to some of the challenges faced by the US system as well. One obvious solution to the greater and more effective use of computers to manage instruction is to ensure that there is more regular and intensive re-training provided to our teachers.

Thousands of software applications have been developed over the years, many for free, to meet specific educational objectives, including:

1. Strengthening subject matter competence.
2. Providing drill and practice activities for different subjects.
3. Enhancing logical thinking and problem-solving skills.
4. Enriching research and writing activities.
5. Simulating complex or dangerous processes that enable students to change variables and visualise how processes are changed.
6. Providing opportunities for students to extend learning beyond the scope of classroom activities.

There are literally hundreds of programmes like the one you have listed and more are available in the market ever year. While the most popular productivity tools are proprietary (e.g. Microsoft) there are also Open Source programmes. It is more than likely that you have used a number of productivity tools in both your professional as well as personal lives. Word processing comes to my mind as the most commonly used tool by most Malaysians having access to computers. However, there are others as well.

You will find from page 105 of Chapter 5 descriptions of all the productivity software that teachers mostly commonly use. Listed on the table below are the tools and the purposes for which they are used in a typical school.

Productivity tools	Purposes
Word Processor	Creating documents from writing textbooks to letters, reports, memos
The Database	Storing and retrieving data such as all kinds of students information
The Spreadsheet	Crunching numbers besides financial management
Drawing and Painting Applications	Creating visual aids for instruction , manipulating illustrations, photographs
Clip Art	Storing pre-drawn images that can be inserted into texts etc.
Learning Assets	Similar to clip art but capturing and storing multi-media
Charts and Graphs	Programmes that turn numerical information into graphics
Integrated Applications	Integrated tools that have capacity to integrate elements like text, art, graphs
Presentation (Authoring) Software including Power Point Presentation	Programmes to create presentations from transparencies, slides to digital movies with capacities to mix texts, images, videos and audio
Web Based Presentation	These are alternatives to Microsoft's Power Point software which are available on the web such as Google Docs
Multi Media Applications	A whole range of tools are available to produce multimedia e.g. Quick Time Pro, i-Movie, Audacity, Garageband
Graphical Organisers	Permits users to organise ideas and concepts into a graphical form
Utilities	Calendars, Memos, Address books, Calculators

Besides productivity tools to support teachers in a variety of functions there are other equally valuable computer programmes that teachers can benefit from (read pp. 122-139 of Chapter 5) programmes. These programmes are useful in undertaking the tasks described below.

1. Electronic templates: a simple example of a template is a "memo" created with your school letterhead and stored in the computer. You can use this letterhead to generate memos for different purposes. Templates can be more complex than this simple example.
2. Curriculum related work: Designing curriculum and writing a syllabus for it is a complex task. Since curricula often require updating, revisions can be expedited if earlier versions were stored electronically and retrieved. Designing the original curriculum and revising them regularly would involve at least three tasks .i.e. content development, outcomes, and assessment. Mind mapping using tools like Inspiration (http://www.inspiration.com/) help planners to clarify the interrelationships of the various aspects of the curriculum.
3. Lesson planning: Lessons or lectures will require revisions depending on changes in curriculum, diversity of participating students, revisions or new editions of text books, etc. Using templates, school teachers can design, revise and update their lessons as needed and store them. This makes life a lot easier for many of us.
4. Content development: Similar to lesson planning, content development requires regular updating. With information becoming available almost by the minute everyday on the web in many formats the benefits of digitising content from design through development is huge.
5. Electronic Boards (EB): These are used extensively in developed countries in place of the old chalk and board. Connected to the internet, the EB has tremendous versatility but to maximise its potential, schools must have excellent and low cost connectivity. The cost issue places limitations on the use of EBs in our country.
6. Desktop publishing: With the range of cheaply available printers and software like Pagemaker, teachers can create almost textbook quality lesson notes.
7. Assessment and Test: Computerised tools to create banks of test items provide great advantages to teachers. The advantage of manipulating test items digitally will increase production of test items, permits refreshing the items and also individualising them if necessary. Public examination authorities in most countries will have in storage thousands of test items that permit them to produce test materials speedily and efficiently. Increasingly on-line testing is also becoming available in some systems.
8. Rubrics: This is a template of sorts. Teachers can create templates to record individual achievements of cohorts of students based on a scale of defined tasks or skills.
9. Portfolios: These are hard copies normally of individual student's learning experience and outputs. These can also be digitised permitting regular updating of student performance.
10. Counseling: WWith increasing use of social media teachers are in an excellent position to individualise advice and help students through the use of social media. However, some caution is expected here of teachers who act as counsellors. Digitised exchanges can be circulated through the net and meanings of messages misconstrued. Advice is available to teachers on the ‘proper' way to handle such counselling exchanges.

Finally, for a quick review let us view the power point presentation (CMI Tour) summarising the highlights of this section on CMI.