Mid Morning Reflections - ICT in Schools Introduction

Day 2

The mid-morning reflection.  Our day started with the review of what took place over the previous period.  We were then tutored into a number of new areas.  We had to go through the creation and update of a number of  predominantly online tools which were not new to most of us but probably under utilized by many of us.

We first had to have an up to date DropBox account where we were expected to keep most of our online storage of data and other items for the duration of the course.  This online storage medium allows persons to have access to their files where ever they go.  It will also act as backup to our offline storage in the event of something unfortunate happening. These files will be accessible remotely via desktop and many other mobile devices.

Reading Activity Reflections

Module 2

Activity 1: Rationale for ICT in schools

We then went on to another interesting activity.  The idea was for us to create a learners charter after reading two articles on ICT in education ITEM 1 and ITEM 2.  We had to create accounts for the persons who were new to this collaborative online Mind Mapping tool.  After completing the signup for a basic account the application was unleashed on us with much excitement.

As the world continues to undergo a technological revolution countries grapple to cope with the forever changing environment of our times.  The discussion in the articles were essentially on the rational for ICT in education as taken from a discussion at the World Economic Forum, Dakar 2000, which was quite relevant.  There were 5 rationales given:

Rationale 1- Underscored the importance of governments need to build a knowledge based society in ICT skills as a means of economic development.  This is indeed essential but it was explained in the article 2 that coming out of this initial thrust was an influx of lower end IT skilled persons onto the job market.  This outcome was not desired and it is proving to be a challenge for governments to gain economic benefits from this circumstance.

Rationale 2 - Made mention of the importance of technology going into the future as being very important for students and countries on a whole.  Here its importance is underscored even as consumer of IT and not so much as producers.

Rationale 3 - Brought home the point that in a changing world of increased ICT usage it is important that the curriculum within schools be adjusted to suit this new trend.  It is therefore important for the use of computers as a learning aid in and out of the classroom.

Rationale 4 -  In this rational the role of the teacher was brought to the fore with mention being given of teachers' role having to change as they leverage the use of ICT in the classroom.

Rationale 5 - Caused the first 4 rationals to be placed in context after considering the emergence of the internet as a source of data and as a tool for learning.  The access to online databases  has given new opportunities to learners through collaboration across schools and colleges across the world.

After all was considered the following are some of the main areas which will be given priority as part of future plans; the use of the internet as a means of gathering data in learning;  learning becoming research and project based; the use of computer aided software to provide drill and practice exercises as a means of reinforcement; to teach computer literacy in the proper context; to facilitate better communication skills; to not teacher IT only as a subject but to have the entire school population benefit from an array of useful ICT and computer literacy skills.

At my school ICT is integrated into teaching and learning on a relatively small scale.  Teachers have been eager in some cases to use technology to some extent in their classrooms but others have shown little interest.  Part of the issue is that resources are limited with the extent to which the technologies might be available to both teachers and students.  Most teachers are not trained on how they can integrate technology into the classroom and others have sought to use their initiative in this regard as they seek to get students more interested in their subject content.  Many have resorted to the use of technology in their lessons after all other methods have failed which have yielded positive results for the most part.  Some of them have left their classrooms as excited as their students upon witnessing the impact that the use of ICT was able to have on the general levels of interest in their classrooms.  Teachers are generally willing with the idea of technology use in the classroom.