Information and Communication Technology for Effective Teaching and Learning free essay sample

It even allows individuals to process information according to their preferred learning styles; as a result it helps to discover things through better learning process and manages to control the pace of learning for themselves. The information and communication technology (video conference, e-mail, distance learning ) helps in promoting opportunities of knowledge sharing throughout the globe. Therefore the article tells that with the help of information and communication technology people are exploring and heading themselves in fulfilling their desires in pursuing education. Key words: Information, Communication, Technology, Education and opportunity. * Sales Executive – India Infoline Pvt. Ltd. , Vijayanagar, Mysore – 570017. E-mail: [emailprotected] com Contact No. : +91-9986298007. ** Assistant Professor DOS in Business Administration, University of Mysore, Mysore-06. E-mail: [emailprotected] com Contact No. : +91-9886990917. INTRODUCTION: Informatics technology is defined as ‘the technological applications (artefacts) of informatics in society’. Information and communication technology, or ICT, is defined as ‘the combination of informatics technology with other, related technologies, specifically communication technology’. We will write a custom essay sample on Information and Communication Technology for Effective Teaching and Learning or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can add to universal access to education, equity in education, the delivery of quality learning and teaching, teachers’ professional growth and more efficient education management, governance and administration. 21st century is considered as knowledge based society wherein ICT plays a vital role in teaching and learning. Throughout the world ICT is being an emerging field of researches in education. It can be used to collect information and learning opportunities available outside the formal schooling system and more than ever in the field of Open and Distance Education it is being extensively utilized. The central and state government (Ministry of Human Resource Development) launched a scheme in December 2004 named as ‘Information and Communication Technology in School’ which aims to provide opportunities to secondary stage students to develop ICT skills and also for ICT aided learning process. The scheme enables widespread availability of access devices, connectivity to the Internet and promotion of ICT literacy in all government schools as the impact of ICT in the field of education was growing rapidly and to utilise the benefits of ICT. ICTs can be seen as a platform to overcome the worst parts of education and learning while creating new opportunities and innovative ways to teach and learn, simultaneously careful monitoring, assessments and coordination are essential to success. REVIEW OF LITERATURE: The empirical study conducted in our country and as well as across the globe related on our topic information and communication technology for effective teaching and learning are presented below. And in order to find out the gaps in these studies it is important to review the available literature on the related aspects of the present study. S K Mishra (May 11, 2008), in his study â€Å"Possibilities of Quality Enhancement in Higher Education by Intensive Use of Information Technology†, tells that the Quality of higher education is a multi-dimensional concept. It lies in effectiveness of transmitting knowledge and skill; the authenticity, content, coverage and depth of information; availability of reading/teaching materials; help in removing obstacles to learning; applicability of knowledge in solving the real life problems; fruitfulness of knowledge in personal and social domains; convergence of content and variety of knowledge over space (countries and regions) and different sections of the people; cost-effectiveness and administrative efficiency. Information technology has progressed very fast in the last three decades; it has produced equipments at affordable cost and it has now made their wider application feasible. This technology has made search, gathering, dissemination, storing, retrieval, transmission and reception of knowledge easier, cheaper and faster. Side by side, a vast virtual library vying with the library in prints has emerged and continues growing rapidly. One may hold that the e-libraries are the libraries of tomorrow when the libraries in prints will be the antiques or the archival objects of the past. His paper discusses in details how information technology can be applied to enhance the quality of higher education at affordable cost. It also discusses the major obstacles to optimal utilization of information technology and measures to remove them. Daniel Lass, Bernard Morzuch and Richard Rogers (January 2007), in their article entitled as â€Å"Teaching with Technology to Engage Students and Enhance Learning†, tells that the Teaching technology effects on student learning in a large lecture introductory statistics course were tested. Findings show in-class personal response systems and on-line homework/quizzes significantly improve student exam scores. We infer proven small class techniques, participating in class and doing homework via technologies; can restore sound pedagogy in larger classes. The experiment was conducted using just one class, but factors usually unaccounted for in assessment research were controlled, especially the instructor and other materials. The technologies investigated here can provide learning benefits to students even in larger courses often criticized for their inability to provide students quality learning experiences. David Thomson (June 26, 2007), in his paper â€Å"Case Map as a Tool for the Research Log Function: Finally, a Technology that Can Help us Teach Better†, tells that teachers at all levels have been encouraged to use technology in the classroom, with mixed results. Unfortunately, technology never makes for a better student or a better teacher by itself. What is needed are customized applications designed by teachers with particular educational objectives in mind. Those teachers charged with the difficult task of introducing their students to the art and practice of legal writing often find themselves in the position of a doctor trying to diagnose an illness from a dead body. That is, they find themselves trying to explain a combination of thinking and writing problems after the two have been mixed together, and the resulting mistakes have already been made. If we could more systematically join with our students in the critical thinking and linking steps that must precede good legal writing, we might be able to help them produce better final products. He describes in his article that the use of a particular software program in the teaching of legal research and writing that, if carefully used and implemented, might finally meet that elusive objective. Paul L. Caron (2006), in his article entitled as â€Å"Teaching with Technology in the 21st Century Law School Classroom†, he believes that people are entering a fourth phase in the deployment of modern technology in the law school classroom, in which faculty embrace technology to actively engage the twenty-first century law student. Instead of fighting losing battles against technology, or living with the problems associated with the current state of law school classroom technology, in the article he discusses three of the new technological tools that he uses on a daily basis in his classes: (1) the Classroom Performance System; (2) the Law Stories Series; and (3) the Law Professor Blogs Network. These technological tools represent the next generation of law school teaching technology and answer critics who charge that technology in the form of PowerPoint slides and laptop computers create a stultifying passive classroom environment. By requiring students to take a more active role in their learning, these technologies help students to thrive in the fast-paced legal world of the twenty-first century using twenty-first century tools. Neal Feigenson, Richard K Sherwin and Christina Spiesel (August 30, 2005), in their paper â€Å"Law in the Digital Age: How Visual Communication Technologies are Transforming the Practice, Theory, and Teaching of Law†, tells that the Law today has entered the digital age. The way law is practiced how truth and justice are represented and assessed is increasingly dependent on what appears on electronic screens in courtrooms, law offices, government agencies, and elsewhere. Practicing lawyers know this and are rapidly adapting to the new era of digital visual rhetoric. Legal theory and education, however, have yet to catch up. Their article has made the first systematic effort to theorize laws transformation by new visual and multimedia technologies and to set out the changes in legal pedagogy that are needed to prepare law students for practice in the new environment. Their article also explores the consequences for legal theory and practice of the shift from an objectivist to a constructivist approach to human knowledge, using an expanded, multidisciplinary understanding of rhetoric to analyze the elusiveness of evidentiary truth and the nature and ethics of persuasion in the digital era. Gordon Monday Bubou (December 2004), in his paper â€Å"Shifting Paradigms in Education: Imperatives for the Infusion of ICT into the Educational System of Bayelsa State of Nigeria†, tells that the past three decades and most recently, information and communications technologies (ICTs) have orchestrated obvious fundamental changes in the way mankind organises himself and does his own things, rendering the world into one digital global village. The greatest casualty in the mist of all these changes is the educational system, because the development, acquisition and dissemination of information is central to the educational system. His paper examines the shifting paradigms in the global education arena which is a direct consequence of advances in ICT and makes a strong case for the infusion of ICT into the educational system in order to derive the maximum benefits inherent in the use of ICT. OBJECTIVES: †¢ To explore the concept of ICT in today’s education system. †¢ To evaluate the importance and usage of information and technology in the process of teaching and learning. †¢ To know whether ICTs help in collecting information and gaining knowledge apart from formal education system. To know the utilisation of advanced technology in the field of education system. Information and communications technology or information and communication technology (ICT), is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT), but is a more specific term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information. The phrase ICT had been used by academic researchers since the 1980s, but it became popular after it was used in a report to the UK government by Dennis Stevenson in 1997 and in the revised National Curriculum for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000. The term ICT is now also used to refer to the convergence of audio-visual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or link system. There are large economic incentives (huge cost savings due to elimination of the telephone network) to merge the audio-visual, building management and telephone network with the computer network system using a single unified system of cabling, signal distribution and management. The speed of change brought in relation to the new technologies has a significant effect on the manner of public lives, work and engage in recreation worldwide. At the same time new and emerging technologies face up to the traditional process of teaching and learning, and the way education is managed. Information technology is a significant area of study which has a major impact across all set of courses. Easy worldwide communication provides on the spot access to a huge collection of data, challenging assimilation and assessment skills. Rapid communication, plus increased access to IT in the home, at work, and in educational establishments, could mean that learning becomes a truly lifelong activity an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant evaluation of the learning process itself. Information Communication Technology (ICT) is often perceived as a useful strategy to transform education systems and a means by which students can develop basic competencies and skills needed for a knowledge economy. The main focus is on how a country’s education system and policy can be enriched through the applications of ICT. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can contribute to universal access to education, equity in education, the delivery of quality learning and teaching, teachers’ professional development and more efficient education management, governance and administration. Access to online facts and research is not increasing the risk that students are graduating without foundational knowledge in a subject. The latest software and applications in information technology allow educators to take a new approach to subject literacy. Rather than simply relying on lectures and slides, lessons can now include a variety of multimedia effects, such as video and audio. Live streaming of events directly into the classroom adds a sense of immediacy and relevance to the lesson. This new selection of tools gives teachers more ways to reach different types of learners, including the disabled, allowing for a greater level of participation in class. We are living in a knowledge-based society where technology acts as an enabler and as a tool for empowerment. Technology has changed the way education has traditionally been disseminated, changing the dynamics of the entire teaching and learning process in the classroom and beyond. It is through technology that distances can be bridged and education can be brought to the student’s doorstep. A student from any place can learn about what is happening in other University classroom. A student from a remote village in any part of India could get quality material to study. Teachers and students can connect with many people and places around the world thanks to information and communication technology, leading to a vast improvement in distance learning courses, and giving those in disadvantaged areas the chance to receive an education equal to the more advantaged. Coursework is also more flexible due to ease of communication, giving more students who work or have other obligations the ability to further their education with a schedule that works for them. On the other hand United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have taken a holistic and wide range of approach to help and promote ICT in education. Access, inclusion and quality are among the main challenges they can address. The Organization’s Intersect-oral Platform for ICT in education focuses on these issues through the joint work of three of its sectors: Communication and Information, Education and Science. UNESCO’s global network of offices, institutes and partners provide Member States with resources for elaborating ICT in education policies, strategies and activities. In particular, the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE), based in Moscow, specializes in information exchange, research and training on the integration of ICT in education while UNESCO’s Bangkok office is strongly involved in ICT for Education in Asia and the Pacific. Technology, while spearheading a revolution in the field of education, has also posed a unique challenge. The biggest challenge that we face today is to create more open resources for a better learning process. CONCLUSION: Being conscious of the important role of ICT (internet) in our life, especially in the educational activities, education authorities should be levelheaded enough in implementing the strategies to make powerful ICT in supporting the teaching and learning process in the classroom. ICT is not just the bloom of the educational activities, but also it will be the secondary option to improve the functional and significant educational measures. The most important purpose of the approach for Information and Communication Technology Implementation in Education is to provide the prospects and trends of integrating information and communication technology (ICT) into the universal educational actions. REFERNCES: http://foldoc. org/Information and Communication Technology. http://www. infodev. org/en/Project. 03. html. http://www. indg. in/primary-education/policiesandschemes/information-and-communication-technology-in-schools-ict-schools. Daniel Lass, Bernard Morzuch and Richard Rogers (January 2007) University of Massachusetts Amherst Working Paper No. 2007-1. Paul Caron, THE FUTURE OF LAW LIBRARIES, Thomson-West, 2006, U of Cincinnati Public Law Research Paper No. 06-11. Neal Feigenson , Richard K. Sherwin and Christina Spiesel NYLS Legal Studies Research Paper No. 05 /06-6, Barbados Group Working Paper No. 05-06.