Social Changes of ICTs in Quality of Education

                                            Social Changes of ICTs in Quality of Education 

We live in a world where facts don’t get as much distribution as lies laced with anger and hate. So what you're seeing in every democracy around the world is that these cheap armies are slowly cutting away at democracy by making facts debatable. I call it death by a thousand cuts. If you don’t have facts, you can't have truth, you can't have trust, and you can't have democracy.

UNESCO

ICT transforming education in Africa

Motivating to learn. 

ICTs such as videos, television and multimedia computer software that combine text,sound, and colorful, moving images can be used to provide challenging and authentic content that will engage the student in the learning process. Interactive radio likewise makes use of sound effects, songs, dramatizations, comic skits, and other performance conventions to compel the students to listen and become involved in the lessons being delivered. More so than any other type of ICT, networked computers with Internet connectivity can increase learner motivation as it combines the media richness and interactivity of other ICTs with the opportunity to connect with real people and to participate in real world events.

Facilitating the acquisition of basic skills. 

The transmission of basic skills and concepts that are the foundation of higher order thinking skills and creativity can be facilitated by ICTs through drill and practice. Educational television programs such as Sesame Street use repetition and reinforcement to teach the alphabet, numbers, colours, shapes and other basic concepts. Most of the early uses of computers were for computer-based learning (also called computer-assisted instruction) that focused on mastery of skills and content through repetition and reinforcement. (See section below on Computer-Based Learning.)

Enhancing teacher training.

 ICTs have also been used to improve access to and the quality of teacher training. For example, institutions like the Cyber Teacher Training Center (CTTC) in South Korea are taking advantage of the Internet to provide better teacher professional development opportunities to in-service teachers. The government-funded CTTC, established in 1997, offers self-directed, self-paced Web-based courses for primary and secondary school teachers. Courses include “Computers in the Information Society,”“Education Reform,” and “Future Society and Education.” Online tutorials are also offered, with some courses requiring occasional face-to-face meetings. ^[15] In China, large-scale radio-and television-based teacher education has for many years been conducted by the China Central Radio and TV University, ^[16] the Shanghai Radio and TV University and many other RTVUs in the country. At Indira Gandhi National Open University, satellite-based one-way video- and two-way audio-conferencing was held in 1996, supplemented by print-materials and recorded video, to train 910 primary school teachers and facilitators from 20 district training institutes in Karnataka State. The teachers interacted with remote lecturers by telephone and fax.

How can ICTs help transform the learning environment into one that is learner-centered? 

Research has shown that the appropriate use of ICTs can catalyze the paradigmatic shift in both content and pedagogy that is at the heart of education reform in the 21st century.  If designed and implemented properly, ICT-supported education can promote the acquisition of the knowledge and skills that will empower students for lifelong learning.

When used appropriately, ICTs—especially computers and Internet technologies— enable new ways of teaching and learning rather than simply allow teachers and students to do what they have done before in a better way. These new ways of teaching and learning are underpinned by constructivist theories of learning and constitute a shift from a teacher-centered pedagogy—in its worst form characterized by memorization and rote learning—to one that is learner-centered. (See Table 2 for a comparison of a traditional pedagogy and an emerging pedagogy enabled by ICTs.)

• Active learning. ICT-enhanced learning mobilizes tools for examination, calculation and analysis of information, thus providing a platform for student inquiry, analysis and construction of new information. Learners therefore learn as they do and, whenever appropriate, work on real-life problems in-depth, making learning less abstract and more relevant to the learner’s life situation. In this way, and in contrast to memorization-based or rote learning, ICT-enhanced learning promotes increased learner engagement. ICT-enhanced learning is also “just-in-time” learning in which learners can choose what to learn when they need to learn it.

• Collaborative learning. ICT-supported learning encourages interaction and cooperation among students, teachers, and experts regardless of where they are. Apart from modeling real-world interactions, ICT-supported learning provides learners the opportunity to work with people from different cultures, thereby helping to enhance learners’ teaming and communicative skills as well as their global awareness. It models learning done throughout the learner’s lifetime by expanding the learning space to include not just peers but also mentors and experts from different fields.

• Creative Learning. ICT-supported learning promotes the manipulation of existing information and the creation of real-world products rather than the regurgitation of received information.

• Integrative learning. ICT-enhanced learning promotes a thematic, integrative approach to teaching and learning. This approach eliminates the artificial separation between the different disciplines and between theory and practice that characterizes the traditional classroom approach.

• Evaluative learning. ICT-enhanced learning is student-directed and diagnostic. Unlike static, text- or print-based educational technologies, ICT-enhanced learning recognizes that there are many different learning pathways and many different articulations of knowledge. ICTs allow learners to explore and discover rather than merely listen and remember.

ICT not only helps the learners, it also helps the teachers to prepare their lesion’s using computer and internet. Teachers can access lot of updated information and material from the web sites using internet. Moreover, there are forums run by teachers from different countries and different education institutions helps the teachers to try and implement new teaching methodology in their teaching process.