'Second our focus is on teachers, not on hardware. Technology is not innovation in itself. What really matters is how teachers themselves use technologies and software to craft and deliver lessons, and push their students to learn in new and sometimes unplanned ways. That's where the real value comes from when we use IT in education,' he said.

Membership of the portal will be initially available to Chinese language teachers from the East Zone schools and two clusters in the South Zone and will eventually be extended to about 3,500 Chinese language teachers across Singapore.

Chinese language teachers can register themselves at sgchinese.innovativeteachers.com to gain access to a library of resources including articles, tutorials and learning materials. The portal provides collaboration tools for teachers to engage in communities of practice and access a personal thinking and working space within the network. It also features a special forum for parents to exchange ideas, knowledge, solutions and experiences in the learning of Chinese language.