Thursday 1 April 2010

ROLE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION

Mrs. Mukesh

Research Scholar, C.C.S. University, Meerut


Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a specific. technology and an engineering discipline. It is a management technique used in handling information. Its application and association are related with social, economical and cultural matters.
Introduction
Educational technology is the application of scientific methods.  The advent of ICT has supplemented and enriched the educational methods of teaching and learning. It has a tremendous potential to contribute to the learning and teaching at all levels in the educational system.
The technology is of great importance in all countries because of the possibilities of its three main contributions:-
A-    Increasing the effectiveness of teaching learning process
B-     Maximizing the out put
C-    Enable the optimum use of resources.
The knowledge and awareness among teachers about the equipments, instruments or apparatus which can be used for making the teaching learning process more interesting and effective are generally found minimal.
The ICT based work is central and students are involved in high level thinking, decision making and problem solving. The ICT not only convert passive, monotonous and mechanical environment in the classroom into a lively one but also make students more active and attentive. The modern ICTs tools are computers, wireless communication technologies along with powerful software which can process and integrate audio, text, video and data into electronic media.

Advantages of ICTs based Teaching
1-         With the help of ICT educators/ teachers can access with colleagues, institutions and universities, centers of excellence/expertise, with resources at cyber space.
2-         With the help of ICT the teacher is freed of the administration burden. They thus would be able to devote more time to the task of helping students for which they are trained; etc.
3-         The use of ICT leads to more positive attitude towards computer. Thus, when computer is taught to the students they feel more involved in the studies, which help them significantly in raising their achievement.
4-         The ICTs enable to access online libraries, journals and research for individual learning.
future view of ICTs in Teaching
1.      Apply technology to increase productivity
2.      Use technology resources to collect and analyze data, interpret results and communicate findings to improve instructional practice and maximize student learning.
3.      Teacher’s resources can be shared with other teachers across the globe.
4.      Use technology resources to engage in on going professional practice/development and life long learning.
In the modern era of technological revolution, there is a substantial improvement in classroom instruction and the internet determines many elements of the teaching learning process. In the classroom the teacher may provide students additional information and references with the help of internet. Further with the help of internet and a multimedia system, the teacher may utilize the technique of teleconferencing when he can interact not only with the students sitting in the classroom but also with many more students sitting at a distance. This technique is being largely utilized by the I G N O U.
Transformational Value of ICTs
There is a large gap between the ICT culture expected and practiced. Sensing the deficiency of the lack of ICT educated human resources, NCTE as a capacity building exercise in the first phase has started ICT literacy camp for teacher educators throughout India. The targeted TEI’s in the first phase were covered in the 100 country wide camps and hands on interactive experience was provided through a series of self learning CDs developed by the NCTE. In this mode NCTE covered a large number of TEI’s and could motivate the teacher educators to use computers in various activities.
Teacher education students have a significant role to play in the sustained application of ICT in schools. It is imperative therefore, that they are exposed to effective use of ICT in their training. However ‘effective use’ is subjective and existing characterisations of this construct appear to drive different ICT implementation plans adopted by teacher education institutions. While most of these plans have achieved varying degree of success, the ‘integration approach’ has been the most promising. By integrating ICT as a learning source during regular classes, lecturers are exposing students to innovative ways of learning. The ICT infused instructional design provides this support as it gives lecturer insight into what their classroom context should look and feel like, if they are to encourage students to access technology as powerful learning tools.
Discussion of the Study
The present study shows that the ICTs are now dominating our private sphere as well as our social and working environments. All the B.Ed. students are having sound knowledge on all components of ICTs such as internet, multimedia, CDROM and EDUSAT. This shows that ICTs are having potentiality to enhance richness and quality of teacher education in the classroom and distribute own developed multimedia resources to others through distributed learning as well as flexible learning.
References
1.        T. Pradeep Kumar – Teacher Education, Page 194
2.        N. Venkataiah – Teacher Education, Page 187
3.        S. K. Panneer Selvam – Teacher Education, Page 233
4.        Journal of Education and Pedagogy Vol-I, June 2009
5.        Journal of Teacher Education, Vol-59, No.-I, Jan/Feb- 2008