Enabling Future Education with Smart Services

The future of the education system will restructure through information communication technology (ICT), which is a comprehensive approach to innovate education systems, methods, and management. The new paradigm of ICT in educations is smart services, which enhances the education efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. The education smart services in Thailand, called NEdNet (National Education Network), are integrated systems including network infrastructure services, education information services (EIS), and Learning services, which facilitator of higher-order thinking skills, support learner-centered, self-directed learning, tailored learning and decision supporting. The first part of NEdNet is network infrastructure systems. Ministry of Education proposed National Education Network (NEdNet) project to develop national education network and provide enough bandwidth for all levels of education. NEdNet is the integration of UniNet Network [6] for higher education, MOENet for schools and VECNet for vocational institutes. NEdNet supports usage of the entire education system with the following bandwidth 1) 293 university connected by dark fiber, which will have bandwidth 1-10 Gbps, 2) 415 vocational institutions, which will have bandwidth 100-1,000 Mbps, and finally 3,000 schools, which will have bandwidth 10-100 Mbps. NEdNet also investigates the coming technology such as 3G, WiMax and FTTx for last mile access networks. NEdNet provides either community internet or research education network (REN), which connected to Internet2 in USA., JGN2 in Japan, TEIN (Trans Eurasia Information Network) and APAN (Asia Pacific Advanced Network). The second part of the NEdNet is education information services (EIS) using Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructure, which provides information for management and executives in three levels. The first level is national level, which establishes a comprehensive e-government project using TH e-Gif (Thailand e-Government Interoperability Framework) [1] to enhance efficiency and quality of general services such as procurement, service delivery, monitoring and evaluation and etc. The second is local level, which shares data and information among education administration organizations and other government departments. The last is school level, which handles education administration in a more efficient, convenient, and innovative way. The last part of NEdNet is Learning services, which provides cloud computing facilities for cyber learning system, digital library (ThaiLis) and educational broadcasting services called E-TV and Teacher TV (IP-TV). These services provide education resources for economically and geographically disadvantaged students and Thailand Cyber University (TCU) for adults to promote lifelong learning. In conclusion, NEdNet is the education smart services, which can contribute to learning outcomes of traditional curriculum domains and can play a greater role in the future education. The network infrastructure decreases students digital-divided in Internet and research networks. The other services are more relevant to quality of education resources, extending learning beyond classrooms, student-centered learning and national competitiveness.