CONCEPT AND IMPORTANCE OF ICT
I.
First ICT tools help to support
cognitive processes be reducing the memory load of a student and by encouraging
awareness of the problem solving process.
II.
Second, it can share the cognitive road
by reducing the time that students spend on computation.
III.
Third, it allows the students to engage
in subject topic that would otherwise be out of reach thereby stretching student
opportunities.
Definitions of ICT:
ICTs are often associated
with the most sophisticated and expensive computer based technologies. But ICTs
also encompass the more conventional technologies such as radio, television and
telephone technology. While definitions ICT re varied. It might be useful to
accept the definitions of provided by UNDP (United Nations Development Program)
ICT’s are basically information-handling tools a varied set of goods,
applications and services that are used to produce, store process, distribute
and exchange information.
1.5.1 NEED OF ICT IN EDUCATION
A) Benefits for Students:
Ø ‘Higher
Quality Lessons’ through greater collaboration between teachers in planning and
preparing resources.
Ø ‘More
focused teaching’ tailored to student’s strengths and weakness, through better
analysis.
Ø Improved
pastoral care and behavior management through better tracking of students.
Ø Gains
in understanding and analytical skills, including improvements in reading
comprehension.
Ø Development
in writing skills (Including spelling, grammar, punctuation, editing and
re-drafting) also fluency, originality and elaboration.
Ø Encouragement
of independent and active learning and self-responsibility for learning.
Ø Flexibility
of anytime, anywhere access.
Ø Development
of higher level learning styles.
Ø Students
who used E.T. in school have increased self confidence and self esteem.
Ø Felt
more successful in school, were more motivated to learn.
Ø Students
found learning in a technology enhanced setting more stimulating and student-
centered than in traditional classroom.
Ø Broadband
technology supports the reliable and uninterrupted downloading of web based
educational multimedia resources.
Ø Opportunities
to address their work to an external audience.
Ø Opportunities
to collaborate on assignments with people inside or outside the school.
B) Benefits for Teachers:
Ø ICT
facilitates sharing of resources, expertise and advertise.
Ø Greater
flexibility in when and where tasks are carried out.
Ø Gains
in ICT literally skills, confidence and enthusiasm.
Ø Easier
planning and preparation of lessons and designing materials.
Ø Access
to up-to-date pupil and school data, anything and anywhere.
Ø Enhancement
of professional image projected to colleagues.
Ø Computer
use during lessons motivated students to continue using learning outside school
hours.
Ø Students
are generally more ‘on-task’ and express more positive feelings when they use
computer then when they are given other tasks to do.
C) Benefits for Parents:
Ø Easier
communication with teacher.
Ø Higher
quality students reports-more legible more detailed, better presented.
Ø Greater
access to more accurate attendance.
Ø Increased
involvement of parents in their children’s learning and capabilities.
Ø ICT
has positive impact across a very wide range of aspects of school life.
1.5.2 SCOPE OF ICT:
TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS, EVALUATION, RESEARCH, PUBLICATION, ADMINISTRATION,
ICT IN TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS
ICT can be integrated in
teaching learning process. It can be used in mastering learning skills.
Learning skills are the reading and thinking skills requisite to any task be
those necessary to define, analyze, solve and report on a problem in a disciplined and independent way.
For good learning skills/teachers/one must be aware of ICT technologies.
Newspapers:
Newspapers
are great source especially for teachers they can used as teaching material to
develop students language skills they can be used effectively for a wide range
of levels from elementary to advanced,
either interpreting them or using them as they are. Newspapers are useful
different subjects and courses especially geography, history, literature,
language classes etc. But we should know how to find this information.
It is often said that
academic success starts at the library. Many libraries have a system of
classification according to topics and issues. We can easily find our way in
searching this information. The committed teachers can design exercises to
develop reading comprehension, critical thinking skills, writing skills,
grammar skills, vocabulary, map/chart, reading skills, geographic skills,
social study skills and more.
Teacher should be careful
with the way how to organic certain activity, using them. In planning a lesson
using a newspaper the teacher should take care of the length of the article,
paragraph and the complexity of the language, the density of the information,
the subject matter and content, the time available and the level of the
students.
Internet:
Students should be
encouraged to mark more on the internet for educational purposes (as it is the
source of knowledge) helps in collecting information about educational
opportunities provided by universities etc. Improves students’s aspiration,
academic achievement. Administrations should provide free facility of use of
internet in colleges and universities so that those students for whom internet
is an expensive device and those who cannot use internet because of too much
distance from their home. They can use it for their academic and other
purposes.
The phrase “Education for
all” can only be achieved if there is internet access for everyone.
Generally there are two
types of interpersonal communications supported by internet i.e. online and
offline.
Online and Offline:
Online communication- It
requires both the sender and receiver to exist at a place and at the same time.
If one is absent the message would not reach the other end.
Example:
Telephone
Offline communication- It
requires only the sender or receiver while sending or receiving the message
respectively.
Example:
Postal System
Internet supports online,
offline and sometimes both simultaneously more over internet supports multiple
senders and multiple receivers in both online and offline model.
Email
(Electronic Mail)
Chat
(Online Chat)
Internet applications:
Internet technology which is
a reflection of the spirit of human being (a product of their minds, hearts and
imagination) is a source of knowledge for educationists, teachers, scientists
and students.
It is used for evaluation
purpose example: National open school is conducting examinations and evaluating
them through the internet.
It is a good source of
getting information about educational opportunities provided by universities,
colleges and other organization and individuals. Its usage also helps in
improving educational aspirations of college students.
Email:
Email
is an offline internet application used by majority of internet users and
mostly used for formal communication purposes. Internet based chat applications
supports both online and offline and often it is used for informal online
communication. Email and chat are available as free of cost and paid services
with same feature differences.
Yahoo, Google, Hotmail, MSN,
Rediff and Skype like companies offer these services free of change.
Internet discussion forum is
another commonly used application that supports online and offline but stores
every conversation for other to know. These increases student’s academic
participation and other academic performances public discussion forums (Ex- www.sukhdukh.com)
have messages posted by any registered use internet.
Private discussion forums
are created for use within an organization or a user group to exchange
information (Ex- www.groups.com,www.yahoo.com
). Other than communication purposes, internet is information (text, images,
audio and video) sharing network and search engine is an application widely
used to locate the information easily
Information and Communication technology:
It
was limited only to the textual mode of transmission of information with ease
and fast but the information which is not only in textual form but in audio,
video or any other media is also to be transmitted to the users thus the ICT=IT
+ Other Media. It has opened new avenues like online learning, e-learning,
virtual university e-coaching, e-education, e-journal, mobile learning etc.
Use of ICT in Teaching:
Teaching at school as well
as higher education, concentrates on giving information, which is not the sole
objective of teaching along with giving information.
The important objectives of ICT
are:
Ø Developing
understanding and application of the concepts.
Ø Developing
communication skills.
Ø Developing
reasoning and thinking power.
Ø Development
of decision making ability.
Ø Improving
comprehension, sped and vocabulary.
Ø Developing
proper study habits
Ø Developing
tolerance, ambiguity, risk taking, capacity, scientific temper etc.
Ø In
the present scenario it is difficult to achieve all these multi dimensional
objectives using multiple methods. ICT can fill this gap and provides access
to.
Ø Different
sources of information.
Ø Provides
correct information as comprehensive as possible indifferent formats with
different examples with online interacting facility.
Ø Also
provides vanity in the presentation of content which helps learners in
concentration, better understanding, long retention etc.
Ø Learners
can work on only live project with learners and experts from other countries –
The super highway and cyber space also help in qualitative improvement of
teaching – learning process.
Ø ICT
provides flexibility to learner which is dented by traditional methods.
Flexibility is a must for mastering in any subject.
Use of ICT in diagnostic testing:
There
are students who fail to understand certain concepts or retain certain
information. This is can be assessed by introducing the diagnosis in the
process of teaching-learning. Due to large class size non availability of diagnostic
tests, lack of training, money and desire on the part of teacher etc. this is
not being done. ICT is the remedy for this. For example: Sansanwal and Lulla
have developed computer based diagnostic testing in chemistry &mathematics.
These were used in identifying gray area of each and every student.
This can be put on the
website of school and the student can asses it from home also. The student can
prepare a topic/chapter and can take the rest to find out exactly what he has
not understood. The student progress can be monitored and his performance can
be improved. This will develop confidence in students and may change their
attitude towards the subject. This may help in reducing the suicidal tendency
among students. Students may start enjoying learning.
Computer based diagnostics test has
following advantages:
Ø They
do not require any special setting or arrangement, the only requirement is
computation systems and software.
Ø The
students can asses it ever from home if made available on school website.
Ø They
do not need any special assistance from teacher as in paper pencil test.
Ø Saves
time both for teacher and student.
Ø Feedback
is immediate which gives intrinsic reinforcement to the learner.
Ø Test
can be updated from time to time.
Ø It
is economical of in terms of money.
Use of ICT in remedial teaching:
Once
the ICT used for diagnostic purpose, the next step is it can used for giving
immediate remedial programme for individual students. It may be online offline.
The instructional material is designed specifically for meeting the individual
needs of students and uploaded on the school website and then the ICT can be
used for providing remedial teaching programme.
Use of ICT in Psychological
testing:
Through research some
correlates of academic achievement have been studied. Rarely this information
is used by school or college teachers. Many teachers do not make use of this
for forming the groups for different academic activities. One of the main
reason is that school or college does not have a trained psychologist, lack of
psychological test process of testing is also laborious. So all the
psychological tests (including this coring and evaluation) can be digitalized
and made available on the website and this facilitates usage for both staff and
students.
Use of ICT in developing virtual laboratory:
Laboratory helps in
understanding of concepts better, makes learning easy and testing, develops
scientific temper etc. But prevailing conditions are different at school and
college level. There are many restrictions under which students have to work in
a laboratory. A virtual laboratory is solution for this. It provides freedom to
students. The student can manipulate any attribute or variable related to the
experiment and can see how it affects the outcome. Suppose a student wants to
study the factors that can affect the focal length of a mirror. At present, in
the real laboratory the student cannot manipulate many variables that he thinks
might be negated. But virtual laboratory can provide lots of freedom to the
student. That is, student can take different types and shapes of objects,
change the thickness of the mirror etc and can see how such attributes affect
the focal length of the mirror. The virtual laboratory can be developed using
ICT. It may be made available at the doorstep of each and every student by uploading
it on the website.
Use of ICT in online tutoring:
The digital technology has
broken the boundaries between countries. In online tutoring student stays at
home he logs on his tutor through the use of internet he can clarify his doubts
through face to face interaction which results in sharing of resources also.
Not only online tutoring but some of the students do outsource their
assignments. These assignments are completed by teachers of other country.
Use of ICT in developing reasoning
and thinking:
Web based instruction (WBI)
can be developed with the help ICT most of the educational institutions do not
pay attention to the development of reasoning and thinking. These abilities
once developed can help individuals for solving day to day problems, which
leads to the quality of life. Thus ICT is used for developing WBI in any
subject or for facilitating reasoning and thinking.
Use of ICT in developing
Instructional materials:
To use the services of experts
in any subjects digitalized lectures can be uploaded on any website and
students and teachers can access any lecture they like e-content is another
form of digitalized lecture. To bring quality in teacher education competent
teachers are developing e-content in their own areas of specialization.
1.5.3 ICT IN RESEARCH
Information and Communication
Technology plays a vital and growing role in research. In its simple form it is
used (to gather, collate and disseminate information) in selecting the topic
till the project/thesis submission.
v To
ascertain the amount or research done in particular field of study.
v To
know the suggestions for further research etc. internet can be used.
v Appropriate
tool that can be selected for gathering information.
1.5.4 ICT IN EVALUATION
The
paper pencil tests which are now used in classroom teaching lack content
validity, they are administered for group. Teachers evaluate this after
specific period of time. So they cannot give immediate feedback to the
students. But ICT enables the assessments of student learning through online
examination for which there is possibility for immediate knowledge of the
result.
ICT enables the assessments
of students learning, both or either for achievement or competitive purpose. A
common sight of a competitive examination is to have an optical mark reader
answer sheet for quick computerized scoring procedures.
1.5.5
ICT IN PUBLICATION
Knowledge is likely to
become the most valued asset of all future, societies, since it can help in
generation of all other assets. In this age information explosion, ICT alone
can keep track of fast moving developments in different disciplines. ICTs have
come to occupy an important place in respect of information storage, retrieval
and dissemination. ICT has become a boon to the field of publication. Book published
by different authors are now available in websites even the encyclopedias are
now seen in Internet. School/College newsletters are now stored online. Thus
the vast potentiality of computers to store, process and even interpret
information now being used in libraries and information resource centers in all
advanced educational system. They maintain computer-assisted devices like
audio-phonetic dictionaries, video science, encyclopedias etc.
Evaluation
The
various components involved in rich presentation
1.
Text matter presentation
2.
Animation presentation
3.
Graphic presentation
4.
Audio presentation
5.
Video presentation
Computer
aided teaching has become popular now a days
·
The notes, printed textbooks can be
digitalized with the help of computer technology.
·
Many e-books are available on websites
developed by different publishers.
·
Encyclopedia is also available on
internet.
1.5.6 ICT IN ADMINISTRATION
ICT
provides several facilities and possibilities for educational administrators to
do their tasks. (The various research studies conducted in the extent of usage
of ICT in administration revealed that technology is utilized in planning, in
supervision and evaluation of academic affairs, student affairs financial
affairs and administrative affairs).
Computer can be used
extensively for educational administration the following are some of the
computers can be used for effective educational administration.
Ø General
administration
Ø Pay
roll and financial accounting
Ø Administration
of student data
Ø Inventory
management
Ø Personal
records maintenance
Ø Library
system
Technology
can be used right from student administration to various resource administration,
in an education institution.
The various ways of introducing
technology in educational institution and administration are:
·
Sending email notices and agendas to
staff, rather than painting and distributing them.
·
Submission of lesson plans through email.
·
Faster technology growth by asking
parents to write email addresses on medical forms.
·
Insist that all the teachers create a
class webpage.
·
Attend technology conferences to see
what other schools are doing to integrate technology and what head of the institutions
are doing to encourage the use of technology in their schools and classrooms.
·
Admissions through web-enabled services.
·
All day-to-day activities of the
institution (General administration)
·
Staff administration.
ICT enhances day-to-day management of
institutions and the various functional areas in which it could be used are
specified below.
·
Time tabling
·
Student admission
·
Financial management
·
Medical services
·
Procurement and store management
·
Data distribution and management
·
ICT is used to maintenance of student
and staff records.
·
Communication & for online
discussion forums.
·
Document management.
·
Facilitation contact and
·
Information exchange
·
Promotes access to higher education etc.
Administration:
·
Employees register
·
Library record
·
Dead stock register
·
Progress report
·
Student register
·
Placement cell
·
Alumni record
·
School campus record
·
Finance and Accounts
·
Time table
ICT included systems for
student admissions and records, examination results, finance database, human
resources database and management information.
Literature reviews reveal
that information administration is one part of overall administration of
educational institutions – which includes four major components namely:
·
Student administration
·
Staff administration
·
General administration
Student administration is an
important and integral part of information administration. This involves
various activities commencing from the admission process to learning activities
till processing of results and performance analysis. The integration of ICT in
to this process enhances the overall admission activities of education
institutions by making it more accessible to many.
This includes:
·
Admission enquiry by students applying
for admissions through electronic media.
·
Registration/ enrolment using computers.
·
Course allotment
·
Providing time table class schedule in
electronic form.
·
Attendance monitoring/maintenance
through e-media.
·
Communications relating to transport,
hostel accommodation.
·
Communication to guardian parent
The integration also helps in
expansions of the geographical boundaries for student in take.
Staff administration includes:
·
Recruitment
·
Work allotment
·
Attendance and leave management
· Performance appraisal
This also includes relevant
communication to and from the institution and among peers.
Staff administration done
through ICT, helps in processing of voluminous records in quick, meticulous and
impeccable manner. Thereby making the data retrieval easier. A good communication
system should also be place for the overall effectiveness of administration.
ICT helps in this by sending e-circulars to students & staff. The
dissemination of information about the institution using e-kiosks.
ICT in general
administration has brought increased efficiency and optimal resource
utilization.
The various items classified under
this category include:
Ø Usage
electronic e-media for scheduling of halls and other resources.
Ø Usage
of e-media by students to apply for university examination.
Ø Usage
of e-media for the processing and display of results of the students.
Ø Usage
of e-media for free payment etc.
