ICT within education has become a great asset to teachers and pupils alike, with the parents also benefiting from it as well. ICT in the school environment has grown very quickly and with very big success. ICT skills has got to be the most important skill that a student needs to learn before they go out and find a job, since the world has become so dependent on computers and technology it would be almost impossible to find a job with no source of ICT within it. Almost all aspects of school can be related to some form of ICT, whether that is features such as:
-Registration at the start of lessons (and also aids staff members in student information, attendances, academic performances, behaviour logs, school time tables, medical information etc.)
-Interactive whiteboards to teach on instead of a normal chalk board.
-E-books which could possibly contain an entire syllabus on just one programme or disk.
Registration and student logs:
Registration is a feature of every school life that all teachers and students must do to show that they are at school and the teachers are also keeping track of their students. A popular registration system that is used in a variety of schools is the programme Sims. Sims is a school registration that allows for teachers to take registers easily when needed. Single letters or symbols are used to show a student’s attendance, generally a ‘N’ will meant that the student is not present and a’/’ means that the student is present and an ‘I’ means the student is not at school due to an illness. A teacher can log into their own Sims account from any computer that is fitted with it and take a registration regardless of the room, and it will have a lesson by lesson log for the teacher so that registration doesn’t take very long. Now that registration has become such an improvement in schools, from a simple hand written registration to a computer controlled system, it is much easier to find students who are perhaps skipping lessons or are under-achieving in certain lessons since Sims keeps a record log of each student in the school. Not only does this benefit the teachers to aid students who need help the most but parents can be assured that the school knows what students expectations are and how their behaviour is.
Interactive whiteboards:
Interactive whiteboards are among the most commonly seen technology in schools, particularly in higher education such as secondary schools, college and universities. Some primary schools have invested in buying and installing interactive whiteboards but the majority do not as it is generally not needed among the younger age group. An interactive whiteboard is a big step up from a normal whiteboard or chalk board. The key thing that an interactive whiteboard gives to a lesson is the flexibility it provides. It can be used to show demonstrations or pictures that originally would not have been available before, teachers can type up the lesson objectives or information on a computer and it will be projected onto the screen for the students to see with greater ease and perhaps most importantly it provides a great amount of interaction between both students and teachers seeing as the whiteboard gives such a huge learning space. However, with these advantages to the interactive whiteboard, there are some disadvantages. The instillation cost of a single interactive whiteboard reaches an average of around £1300 which is an enormous sum of money for a school to invest in, especially if a whiteboard is required in every room. The set up of an interactive whiteboard can become very tedious as it needs constant recalibration so that when the pen touches the board is not in an obscure place to where the pen is actually situated. An issue that may arise in the common school environment is if a student accidently uses a board pen on the fragile interactive whiteboard then the mark made will most likely be very difficult to remove, or in some cases not removable at all.
An e-book, a shortened name from electronic book, is a book like publication but in digital form. An e-book consists of text and images and is readable on a computer and other electronic devices; but in the school environment a computer is what will be used to present an e-book. In the Oxford English Dictionary the definition of an e-book is “an electronic version of a printed book”. E-books can contain a variety of information and are laid out in a format that is almost identical to an actual book. Users can scroll through the ‘pages’ of the book using their keyboard or mouse. One large advantage to e-books is how the user is able to read what is presented. Text and images can be enlarged for ease of reading and specific features can help prompt users with reading, such as highlighting words at a steady pace. Some e-books have an audio feature that pupils can listen to whilst they read along which makes learning much easier and bearable. Of course, since the e-book is an electronic device, this makes the device and software relatively expensive when compared to the common text book that would be used normally.
Advantages of ICT in Education:
-Using ICT in lessons makes showing images to students much more practical and will improve the memory of that image for students.
-Complex instructions and objectives can be explained in a much easier fashion through the use of putting them up on a screen.
-Lessons become more enjoyable and practical if the students are included; this mostly refers to the interactive whiteboards.
-Teachers can form a better understanding of students who need more help than others because of particular logs and reports that are made from other teachers around the school.
-Students who miss lessons are more likely to be found out with the use or a computerised registration that automatically keeps track of attendance.
Disadvantages of ICT in Education:
-Setting up devices and software can be a troublesome ordeal.
-Some applications can be way too expensive even if the school can afford several; there is no point in having some of these applications in select classes and not in others.
-Learning and adapting to new technology is always a hard concept to get into, especially for those with no IT skills.
-Arguments over the devices or software may occur in the younger ages if there is only one of said device or software.
My Experience:
Being a student in a secondary school, now currently in the 6th form part of the school, I have had a fair amount of experience with both software and devices. The most obvious being the interactive whiteboard. I went to a primary school that, in the latter years of being a pupil there, managed to afford an interactive whiteboard in every class; probably because there were only seven classrooms. So going into secondary school I had already had a brief experience with this new technology that at first seemed very daunting and interesting. Now that I am in 6th form I have grown up with computer registrations, interactive whiteboards and at least one computer in every class room. I prefer using technology to do work as I find typing out work and assignments a much easier process when given a keyboard that only takes a brief moment to type out a word when compared to physically writing it out with a pen. This is not to say that all work related instances are completed with a computer and keyboard; note taking within class is almost always done with pen and paper.
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