GOVERNOR MARIANO E.

VILLAFUERTE COMMUNITY COLLEGE- SIRUMA

Poblacion, Siruma Camarines sur
gmvcc.siruma@gmail.com

Instructor: Mary Joy DM. Borja

MODULE OBJECTIVES
After the completion of this module, student shall be able to:

• Understand why ICT is needed in education

• What are the various ICT tools use in education
• Understand the advantages and disadvantages of ICT in education

MODULE CONTENTS

Using ICT in Education 2

Various devices/technology in ICT 2

Why measure ICT in education? 2

Why use ICT as a tool in education? 3

Examples of how ICT can be used in education: 3

Conditions for effective use of ICT in education 3
Advantages of ICT in education 4
Disadvantages of ICT in Education 5
Using ICT in education: Benefits and Conditions
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education is the mode of education that use
information and communications technology to support, enhance, and optimize the delivery of information.

Worldwide research has shown that ICT can lead to an improved student learning and better teaching
methods. A report made by the National Institute of Multimedia Education in Japan, proved that an increase
in the use of ICT in education with integrating technology to the curriculum has a significant and positive
impact on students’ achievements.

The results specifically showed that the students who are continuously exposed to technology through
education has better ‘knowledge’, presentation skills, innovative capabilities, and are ready to take more
efforts into learning as compared to their counterparts. Developments in ICT are making information-
exchange faster, easier and more cost-effective. These changes have brought about improvements in speed
and modes of communication in recent years and are resulting in significant changes in the way we live and
work. Particular interest to educators is that when used effectively, ICT offer the potential to: Make education
more accessible.

Using ICT can make education increasingly free of the constraint of distance and make education
easier and cheaper to access. Improve the quality of education. Use of ICT can change the ways we teach
and learn – to bring about better learning outcomes.

Various devices/technology in ICT includes:

• Access of course materials through remote devices,

• Online digital repositories for lectures, course materials, and digital library,
• Online/ cloud based academic management systems,
• Employing the flipped classroom concept,
• Making use of handheld computers, tablet computers, audio players, projector devices etc.

Also, the rising number of Massive Open Online Courses(MOOCs) like the coursera, khan academy,
and edx tells us that there is a huge demand for off-the-classroom learning facilities. The future of our
institutions will depend on whether or not they can satisfy those needs.

Why measure ICT in education?

Policy makers accepts that ICT in education can help the students to compete in the global economy by
being part of a skilled workforce and facilitate social mobility by:

• Enhancing learning experiences and providing new sets of skills,

• Reaching more students with Massive Open Online Courses(MOOCs),
• Facilitating the training of faculties,
• Minimising costs and saving time associated with information delivery and automating regular day-
to-day tasks,
• Improving the administration of institutions to enhance the quality and efficiency of service delivery.

Why use ICT as a tool in education?

Using ICT effectively in education can help to improve the reach and quality of education. In particular,
ICT can:

• Expand educational opportunities by making education available anywhere, anytime

and to anyone.
 • Improve learning outcomes by making learning more interactive and getting learners
more involved in the subject matter.
• Improve motivation to learn by improving relevance of content and making learning more fun.
• Enable education to be tailored to individual learning needs and abilities.
• Enable locally relevant teaching materials, in local languages, to be created and disseminated
quickly and affordably.
• Facilitate technology-skill formation, team-work abilities and other “21st century skills”
among learners.
• Bring about pedagogical improvements and learner-centered teaching.
• Provide conditions that permit and promote lifelong learning.
• Increase the effectiveness and efficiency of education planning and delivery.

Examples of how ICT can be used in education:

• Educators and learners can use local television programmes (in local languages) and videos
to enhance understanding of current affairs, culture, science and other subjects.
• Educators and learners can use digital cameras to prepare their own content and learning
materials. See: www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=6885
• Administrators can use computer-based Learning Management Systems to deliver e-learning
courses and manage student learning.
• Organizations can produce and broadcast educational radio programmes in local languages.
For example, in Kazakhstan, a project called “Silk Radio”led to the creation of an ongoing soap
opera (story) in the local language, dealing with topical issues, including health and
community issues. www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=1226
• Teachers can use the Internet in project-based learning and for web-quests. See:
www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=pbl_ict
• On-line Web 2.0 communication tools, such as Skype, Blogs, Wikis and Forums, can
be used by educators and students to gain information and to form networks with
other students, teachers, schools, subject experts and communities. These tools can
also be used for online professional development and to enable students to improve their
reading and writing skills. See: www.unescobkk.org/index.php?id=5323

Conditions for effective use of ICT in education

The right conditions need to be in place, however, before the educational benefits of ICT can be fully
harnessed.

Conditions include:
• Political and financial commitment (at both government and school levels).
• Conducive policy and careful planning for integration of ICT into education.
• Adequate infrastructure (including alternatives to conventional infrastructure such as
wifi and solar power).
• Equipment and ICT tools (such as desks, chairs, radios, televisions and computers) that are
appropriate for local needs and are affordable in the long term.
• A system of ongoing professional development for teachers.
• Enthusiastic teachers, equipped with the skills required to make good use of ICT tools for
enhancing education.
• Appropriate curricula that permit the use of ICT in teaching and learning.
• Institutional flexibility and monitoring and assessment systems.
• Adequate and timely technical support (troubleshooting), maintenance and repair of
equipment) in schools and learning centers.
Advantages of ICT in education
1. Improves engagement
When technology is integrated into lessons, students are expected to be more interested in
the subjects they are studying. Technology provides different opportunities to make learning more fun
and enjoyable in terms of teaching same things in new ways. For instance, delivering teaching through
gamification, taking students on virtual field trips and using other online learning resources. What is
more, technology can encourage a more active participation in the learning process which can be hard
to achieve through a traditional lecture environment.
2. Improves knowledge retention
Students who are engaged and interested in things they are studying, are expected to have a
better knowledge retention. As mentioned before, technology can help to encourage active
participation in the classroom which also is a very important factor for increased knowledge retention.
Different forms of technology can be used to experiment with and decide what works best for students
in terms of retaining their knowledge.
3. Encourages individual learning
No one learns in the same way because of different learning styles and different abilities.
Technology provides great opportunities for making learning more effective for everyone with different
needs. For example, students can learn at their own speed, review difficult concepts or skip ahead if
they need to. What is more, technology can provide more opportunities for struggling or disabled
students. Access to the Internet gives students access to a broad range of resources to conduct
research in different ways, which in turn can increase the engagement.
4. Encourages collaboration
Students can practice collaboration skills by getting involved in different online activities. For
instance, working on different projects by collaborating with others on forums or by sharing documents
on their virtual learning environments. Technology can encourage collaboration with students in the
same classroom, same school and even with other classrooms around the world.
5. Students can learn useful life skills through technology
By using technology in the classroom, both teachers and students can develop skills essential
for the 21st century. Students can gain the skills they will need to be successful in the future. Modern
learning is about collaborating with others, solving complex problems, critical thinking, developing
different forms of communication and leadership skills, and improving motivation and productivity.
What is more, technology can help develop many practical skills, including creating presentations,
learning to differentiate reliable from unreliable sources on the Internet, maintaining proper online
etiquette, and writing emails. These are very important skills that can be developed in the classroom.
6. Benefits for teachers
With countless online resources, technology can help improve teaching. Teachers can use
different apps or trusted online resources to enhance the traditional ways of teaching and to keep
students more engaged. Virtual lesson plans, grading software and online assessments can help
teachers save a lot time. This valuable time can be used for working with students who are struggling.
What is more, having virtual learning environments in schools enhances collaboration and knowledge
sharing between teachers.
Disadvantages of ICT in Education
1.Immense expenditures

Gone are the days where students have to depend on paper and pen. This is an advanced era
of technology where machines like computers substituted the use of paper with its hi-tech features
and to maintain them a huge sum of money is required by schools and colleges which can otherwise
be spent to buy necessary resources. In addition to it you have to spend thousands of dollars to
update the out-dated softwares which are incompatible with present technology.

2.Insufficient methods of teaching

With the advancement of mechanization, teachers are not equally trained with its proper
implementation. Thus learners are just using technology instead of gaining knowledge from it. Using
applied science to achieve education in the proper way is a good thing but to transform it into an
active set of skills is a matter of time.

Inquiry-based learning is the best way to teach the learners where they get an opportunity to
research on different topics individually. Therefore, technology should be fused with this method of
teaching to make the learner’s brain keep working instead of being totally dependent on them.

3. Transforming learners into inefficient learners

Very difficult to find the word “diligent” in learners nowadays as most of the lessons can be
easily accessible to them online through different websites in their computers which are making them
inattentive in classrooms or making the mote skip schools frequently.

Relying completely on computers are creating poor studying habits. Many students keep
browsing websites to find the shortest possible way to solve problems in Mathematics instead of
solving them in a traditional way which actually helps them to gain in-depth knowledge of the subjects.
Spell-checkers prevents them from learning the correct spelling thus resulting infinite spellingmistakes
in paper.

4.Waste of valuable time

It is the humanbeing who built technology not the technology that created a human. As
humans are not error-free, similarly technology too does not come error-free. There are lots of
problems like server error and connectivity problems which take oodles of time to troubleshoot it,
therefore, hindering the learning process which can sometimes be a matter of frustration both for the
learners and the educators. Wastage of time because of unnecessary issues is not at all advisable in
schools or any learning institutes where every second is valuable for the learners.

5. Misguided by the wrong information

With the speeding development of technology, the websites owner urges to rank their websites
higher in search engines, so they only concentrate on rankings instead of the content that they are
posting. Many websites come with wrong information that has been copied and pasted from other
sources without checking its authenticity. Thus the learners are misguided by the wrong informations
available on the websites. These things can perhaps become serious obstacles in their development.

6.Major sources of distractions

One of the statistics that revealed, almost 60% of the schools in U.S.A issues laptops and
tablets. As you know that in present generation social networking sites are literally ruling the world
with its attractive innovations therefore students and learners are busy in checking their posts and
updates, counting the number of likes, checking the status that they themselves or any of their near
and dear ones updated, engage in commenting on social sites etc. all these activities create a huge
distance between them and their education.

7. Creating enough room for cheating

The mechanized world is making you more and more lazy giving all the powers to control
everything by a click of mouse. Cheating is an illegal activity but technology made it more powerful
and easy to use with its powerful wings. It has really become very tough to control this activity,
especially in the examination environment. Smartphones are available with all its advanced features
and instant internet accessibility which compel them to use it without any hassles.

8. Increase rate of cyber bullying

Cyber bullying is an illegal activity where especially youngsters fall under the trap of illegal
crimes without their knowledge. The young learners have an easy access to umpteen accounts that
tends them to enter into the dark tunnel of harassment which has an entry but no exit at times. They
lost in its darkness along with their shining future which could have given miraculous results if
cultivated properly but with cyber bullying everything gets washed off all of a sudden.

9.Makes learners disconnected from the real world

In recent days to keep equal pace with technology educators are busy in educating the learners
with its online education tools instead of communicating orally that makes them unable to interact
with their teachers and share their problems openly to overcome it. Teachers fail to draw student’s
attention. To avoid these problem educators should always use verbal communications along with
online education tools so that their students can dynamically learn the topics along with proper
interactions.

10. Major challenges for teachers

Every day, scientists come with new discoveries and challenges that keep technology rolling
every second. Softwares keep on upgrading and if a teacher does not possess technical skills, it
becomes difficult for him to execute it in the right direction. Hence, educators have to be expert in
technical skills, the school has to hire technical experts adding extra expenses to their expenditures
to overcome these technical challenges.

11. A major drawback of losing assignment for students

Computer is a machine which often faces malfunction at times due to its wear and tear. Just
imagine you have to submit your assignment tomorrow which is your last deadline and you have put
all your hard labours to complete the assignment and saved it in your laptop to get the highest grade
in class but all of sudden just the night before submission your laptop isn’t working. What will be your
reaction? Will you be able to put the same efforts within that limited time? All your efforts went in
vain with the malfunctioning of your laptop. You cannot rely completely on these gadgets for your
important projects and assignments.

12.Difficult to deal with online courses

You keep on exploring the world each day but still there are lots of facts that are left
unexplored. Knowledge has no limit and no age. Many students or learners have urge to keep their
learning go on and on but at times it becomes difficult for them to attend regular classes due to their
 job or other difficulties but with advance science it has become easy nowadays as it has given us the
marvellous option of perusing online courses along with our regular activities, but problems like slow
internet speed and network issues keeps troubling you. The other disadvantage is that these online
courses often fail to create motivation for learning or self-discipline and usually ends with monotonous
experiences and frustration.

13. Extinct of good handwriting

As smartphones, laptops, desktops and tablets wholly replaced the use of paper and pen,
therefore, finding a person with good hand writing is just like finding a needle in the haystack. All the
important documents are now typed and fitted in that small folder icon in your laptop. Experts say
that people are sacrificing their handwriting to adopt the technology for fast learning. Using of
technology in place of handwriting slow down your thinking process by making your neurons lethargic.

14. Partial to the low-income group

Some low-income institutes in U.S.A does not have access to a huge number of computers to
make it available for all the students so in this case those students may be unaware of the basic
computer skills that have been learned by other students at a very early stage. Technology needs a
huge sum of money to shower its blessings to the educational institutes especially the colleges that
requires large number of computers to educate its students with advanced science.

15. Replacing books with e-books

The world is shrinking day by day and so all your important stuffs are now compressed in your
favourite gadgets even the books which have now become e-books which are called electronic books.
Books are your real assets and can never be replaced by e-books which may not be cost-effective at
times and can cause eyestrain. E-books are not compatible in all the devices so your laptop or tablets
should have e-book reader to access electronic books and the worst part is your e-book can be hacked
easily by the hackers.

Wherever there is light, there is a shadow. Technology can make you fly higher and higher in
the sky but at the same time it can even ruin your life with its negative features. Technology can
enhance your knowledge at the same time it can even lower your grade in education.

References:

https://stories.linways.in/ict-enabled-education-
d190bcc91bf0#:~:text=Information%20and%20Communication%20Technology%20(ICT,learning%20and
%20better%20teaching%20methods.

https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000156769?posInSet=6&queryId=16cfca61-1692-49f1-9dc8-
b0087cbec04c

https://www.webanywhere.co.uk/blog/2016/02/top-6-benefits-technology-classroom/
 Discussion Questions

1. Why is ICT is important in education?

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2. Give at least 3 benefits of ICT in education. Explain your understanding about the benefit using
your own words.

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3. As a student, Explain how ICT helps you in education.

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