As the advent of laptops and broadband services have given a whole new meaning to innovation in technology and access to internet, ample of people these days, from across the globe are spending more time online, performing different chores like e-shopping and boosting their entrepreneurial activities from the comfort zone of their home. The list is not just limited to that, but also listening to radio, playing e-games, using social media sites, or chats online with their loved ones, all that also falls in this category. If we look meticulously, each one of us has one active email account on Yahoo, Google and Hotmail. Moreover youngsters are seen to be more inclined towards internet addiction these days, particularly towards the latest inventions like iPad and the other newest forms of technology.
We mostly use technology either to have fun, to stay in connection with our loved ones or for business purposes, but have you ever wondered how often have we used it in our education? Are your school systems and technology advanced enough that your children are submitting their assignments through email or online? Are your teachers so up-to-date with the latest technology that they are taking help of presentations and documentaries available online to teach students from primary and secondary levels instead of just adhering to the allocated syllabus and documentaries? Most likely you must've never pondered over it! Before we shed light over why not, we must first look into why we should use Information and Communications Technology (ICT) into our classrooms.
When integrated into classrooms ICT does not only add immense value to the quality of your teaching but also offers a holistic learning experience for pupils. This form of technology makes education much easier and visual for children, saves their time, and opens more avenues for young scholars to make their assignments more creatively and productively. If incorporated wisely into the system, this form of technology can make complicated and trivialized concepts more comprehensible and simple for children. Moreover this facility will also give them the opportunity to become a part of the IT village globally, improving their communication and technical skills.
ICT also makes any topic more interesting, as teachers get a wide-selection of pictures, movies, spreadsheets and the online quizzes to conduct with their lesson plans. With the interactive classroom sessions and student participation one can be certain that this technology elevates the prospects for any institution of producing well-informed and tech savvy individuals who are sufficient competent enough to survive in the saturated job market of the 21st century.
This brings our attention to the fact that if ICT can help a teaching system that much then why it hasn't been incorporated yet. This is perhaps because many teachers treat ICT as a stand-alone activity. They don't consider it important enough to make it a part of their lesson plans and the curriculum. Most of the teachers even these days prefer using a white board or a black board to explain all the topics. This conventional way of teaching certainly works. However students face innumerable dilemmas in memorizing the concepts for longer time spans and forget them as soon as their term gets over.
It would be better if teachers encourage children to participate into online activities, graphs, videos, templates, databases, graphs, and presentations in their lesson plans to make all the explanations more clear and engaging. Such resources are conveniently available on various educational portals that are user-friendly and offer convenient services to the users.
Students can also be encouraged to write online essays, reports, observations and essays. With the latest invention of Google Pixel it has now become more convenient for them to plan, organize, draft and proof read their present work and save it with minimal errors.
With ICT the most boring subjects like mathematics and science can also bring life to their most boring lessons. For example instead of drawing the pie and bar charts on the whiteboard, which are mostly not even clear, they can garner data online or through textbooks and MS Word and explain it through charts on PowerPoint or Word to give in-depth details to students on a particular topic. On their end also this will help them to represent their data professionally in different colleges, universities, and various other work places in the longer term in their career.
If practiced rationally, ICT can reshape the face of entire education system. However to achievement of this goal requires meticulous planning of the structure that can bring positive difference in the ways our students learn.
