APPLICATION OF ICT IN EDUCATION
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
The
future development of Nigeria and its participation in the knowledge society
will be greatly influenced by how Nigeria manages to deliver quality education
to its citizens. Nigerians specifically acknowledges this in its Second Decade
of Education for Nigeria (2006–2015) Plan of Action: Education forms the basis for developing innovation, science and
technology, in order to harness our resources, industrialise, and participate
in the global knowledge economy and for Nigeria to take its rightful place in
the global community. It is also the means by which Nigeria will entrench a
culture of peace, gender equality and positive Nigerian values. While
ICT has been used in many parts of the world to improve the quality and
increase access to education, most Nigerian countries still face the challenge
that increased expenditure on education is not necessarily achieving the the
use of ICT to support improvement and transformation of the education sector in
Nigeria, It identifies specific opportunities and challenges, and recommends
areas of intervention for governments, development partners and other
stakeholders.
. From blackboard to television, the previous
tools were presentation tools only. Computers, however, can not only present
information with all the audio-visual expressive possibilities of television or
film, but also can receive information from the user, and can adapt them
presentation to the user needs, preferences or requests. Furthermore, in those
schools where the Internet is accessible, the computer is the gateway to
information without frontiers, and the catalyst for teacher and student dialogs
beyond the walls of single class or school.
Today, when a major effort is being invested in the transformation of the
classroom, moving away from frontal, expository, didactic presentations to
environments where learners are active discoverers and builders of knowledge,
the computer is the tool with the potential to help in reaching these goals.
For a detailed description of different modes of computer use in the
educational environment, see Alessi and Trollip (1991) or Venezky and Osin
(1991). In the framework of this Technical Note, the following modes and
benefits are summarized briefly. Computer-Assisted Learning The
student learns by interacting with a program stored in the computer.
This
program is designed to react to the student’s needs according to predetermined
pedagogical criteria. In this case the student conducts a “distant dialog” with
the authors of the educational program, who - in a well-designed program -will
have considered the learning difficulties involved in the topics studied, and
designed accordingly a set of remedial interventions. Enrichment units should
have been included also, to attend to the interests of students who want to
study in depth, beyond the curriculum requirements. Benefit Each student may learn according to his or her cognitive
level and learning speed, independently of his or her classmates. Each student
receives individual guidance, with explanations tailored to perceived problems,
and opportunities 4 Education and Technology Series, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1998
for in-depth learning according to individual interests.
Simulation
and Exploration There are topics of study that deal with real systems
whose complexity makes them hard to comprehend, operate, or predict. When we
want our students to learn how to cope with such a system, the best pedagogical
approach is not to provide a set of rules that describe the behavior of the
system, but rather to let them explore the behavior, make decisions and predict
their consequences or, in short, learn according to their own experience with
the system.
This
is easier said than done, when the real system is a hydroelectric power
station, or the economy of a nation, or a patient that requires medical
treatment. Fortunately, for many real systems a computer model has been
developed, i.e The computer provides an output describing the behavior of the
system, and the changes in this behavior produced by the input of diverse
actions.
Thus,
a student may check the validity of decisions concerning the amount of water
allowed to circulate in the
hydroelectric power station in conditions of possible drought or flooding, or
the effect on unemployment of raising taxes, or the effect of a certain therapy
for a patient with given symptoms. All this without creating shortages of
electric power for the population, or unemployment,
or
killing the patient. Benefit The
student is actively exploring phenomena, instead of being a passive recipient
of information. Thus each student builds his or her mental models of knowledge
and develops the skills of searching information and creating hypotheses, which
then can be verified or rejected using experimental results. The teacher may
use simulations to generate class discussions and to stimulate students to
generate hypotheses and critically analyze a phenomenon. Computational
tools Teachers and students can use computer-based tools, such as text
or graphic editors, databases, spreadsheets, or presentation packages, to help
in processing information. Two important benefits that come to mind are: a)
teachers’ can enrich their presentations with rich graphics and tables, which
can be stored in their computer, easily updated, and readily accessible for
presentation to the whole class by means of a projection device; b) Students’
papers may be of higher quality, particularly if, instead of just assigning a grade,
the teacher requests that each paper be typed using a word processor and
delivered on a diskette or through e-mail, thereby allowing the teacher to
insert comments and suggestions
and
return it to the student for corrections until a satisfactory paper has been
achieved. Benefit Teachers and
students get used to working in the style and with the tools that permeate
industrial, commercial and intellectual life.
Communication networks Students
and teachers can communicate with their peers and access data banks in
different parts of the country and around the world, in order to develop joint
projects, exchange information, or request advice. Instead
of
the expository presentation of a topic, the teacher may ask a student, or a
team of students, to research the topic by exploring the Internet for relevant information. Not all the
information on the Internet is reliable, but such is the information we gather
in the real world, so that students will have to develop their analytical and
critical skills. These skills are not usually developed in the restricted
environment
of the typical classroom, where most information has been filtered for them.
Teams of students in one country can develop joint projects with teams of
students in other countries by exchanging and comparing data on similar or
contrasting phenomena. Benefit Instead
of isolated classes, students can communicate with people and gather
information from around the world, thereby increasing their motivation to use
higher-level analytical skills in their school work. In addition, communication
among people from different countries helps to break down stereotypes and may
expand intellectual horizons. Teachers who work in relatively isolated
environments are able to exchange information with their peers, receive advice
from experts around the world, and download an increasingly broad array of
teaching and learning materials available on the Internet. Pedagogical
administration Teachers can access a student database, where information
about each student’s knowledge map is stored. This information
allows
teachers to organize more effective learning environments for each student.
Computers in Education in Developing Countries: Why and How? Benefit
For the first time the teacher has the tools to make sophisticated and
complex pedagogical decisions, based on appropriate information. Without
computers, individualizing or personalizing instruction was quite difficult
because it is impossible for a teacher to keep track of the different
trajectories of all of his or her students in the universe
of
knowledge defined by the curriculum. A pedagogical administration system can
show the topics mastered by a student, the topics where help may be needed,
suggestions for topics and materials to be presented or assigned, and the
possible groupings of students for team projects, selecting automatically
students who have satisfied the prerequisites for each project being
considered. Another important consequence of wide dissemination of
computer-based educational materials that
have
well-conceived pedagogical interactions, is that they serve as good examples
for teachers who may be isolated. Based on such examples, teachers may expand
their repertoire of strategies, and recognize the need for improvement in their
classroom practices.
Education forms the basis for developing
innovation, science and technology, in order to harness our resources,
industrialise, and participate in the global knowledge economy and for Nigeria
to take its rightful place in the
Global
Community. It is also the means
by which Nigeria will entrench a culture of peace, gender equality and positive
Nigerian values. While ICT has been used in many parts of
the world to improve the quality and increase access to education, most
Nigerian countries still face the challenge that increased expenditure on
education is not necessarily achieving the expected benefits. This chapter
examines the potential for the use of ICT to support improvement and
transformation of the education sector in Nigeria, including brief case studies
of South Nigeria, Uganda and Senegal. It identifies specific opportunities and
challenges, and recommends areas of intervention for governments, development
partners and other stakeholders. It looks in particular at the following five areas:
·
Teacher professional development;
·
Digital learning resources;
·
Affordable technologies;
·
Education management information systems
(emis); and
·
National research and education networks
(NRENs).
In
Nigeria, many governments have focused on developing national ICT policies and
National Information and Communication Infrastructure Plans to support their
socio-economic development efforts and policies for ICT in education. Several
Nigerian governments are prioritizing the use of ICT in education, in order to
achieve critical strategic developmental objectives – or at least agreeing
policies to do this. Developing countries, however, have experienced
difficulties in adapting policies and regulations to rapid changes in
technology and market structure. In some instances, policies concerned with ICT
and education are not complemented by policies in other relevant areas, such as
telecommunications, that support such development. Furthermore, ICT policies
are not always accompanied by detailed implementation plans or commitment from
government to implement them.
Increasingly,
investment in ICT is being seen by education institutions as a necessary part
of establishing their competitive advantage, because it is attractive to
students and is also deemed essential by governments, parents,
employers
and funders of higher education. Despite this, here is no direct correlation
between increased spending on ICT and improved education performance. Benefit
and impact, to the extent that they can be reliably measured, are more
functions of how ICT is deployed than of what technologies are used.
The
growth of knowledge societies has placed increasing emphasis on the need to
ensure that people are information- literate. However, it is important to
consider expanded definitions of information literacy that are based on
mastering underlying concepts rather than on specialized skill sets. Education
systems need to develop and establish methods for teaching and evaluating these
critical literacies at all levels of education.
ICT
can facilitate a transition of the role of the teacher in the classroom into
that of an instructional manager helping to guide students through
individualized learning pathways, identifying relevant learning resources,
creating collaborative learning opportunities, and providing insight and
support both during formal class time
and
outside of contact time. Unfortunately, however, most professional development
programmes tend to concentrate on teaching educators how to use the technology
itself. Professional development needs to focus on how to mentor and guide
learners in this environment.
At
the same time, the emergence of the concept of Open Education Resources (OER )
has led to growth in the collective generation and sharing of content by
networked groups of people, and in the proliferation of technologies that
enable cheap information-sharing and collaboration. The digitization of
information in all media has also, meanwhile, introduced significant challenges
concerning intellectual property. ICT is reducing barriers to entry for
potential competitors to traditional education institutions by reducing the
importance of geographical distance, enabling potential new efficiencies in
overheads and the logistical requirements of running education programmes and
research agencies, and expanding cheap access to information resources. As a
result, there has been significant growth in the number of distance education
programmes in which teachers and students are physically separated, and in
which teaching and learning take place by means of individual technologies or
combinations of technologies.
Mobile
and personal technology platforms are increasingly seen as appropriate for
services of all kinds. The capabilities of mobile and personal devices have
grown, driven partly by the increasing availability of digital materials and
applications. Planning for new interventions which aim to harness ICT to
improve education must begin with contextualized needs analysis and careful
preparation which takes account of the realities within which implementation
will take place. There is no single right approach which suits all educational
environments but there are a number of general opportunities which are worth
noting:
Establishing an enabling policy environment, or
reviewing what is in place to ensure sufficiency, is a major
opportunity for many countries (see Box 4.1). South Nigeria and Egypt are
examples of countries that have achieved significant progress in the
integration of ICT in education through enabling policy environments, supported
by appropriate institutional and regulatory structures. They illustrate that,
where there has been significant scaling up of ICT integration into teaching
and learning, implementation has been carried out through cross-sectoral
collaboration between ministries of education and other sectors. An enabling
policy environment includes policies and initiatives that help to drive the
national ICT agenda, and includes policy on ICTs in education, bandwidth
and
connectivity. Existing education policies in most Nigerian countries need
thorough review and updating to ensure that the policy for ICT in education
supports and is supported by complementary policies for education
as a whole.
Additionally, all education legislation should be reviewed and updated to
safeguard against legal and conceptual contradictions created by ICT in
education policies. Most important is the need to align resource allocations
and budgets with priorities defined in these new policy positions. While
responsibility for the management of schools is shared between national and
provincial government in South Nigeria, all priorities and programmes are in
line with national policy determined by the national government. South Nigeria
has a number of cross-sectoral and mutually supportive policies. Successful
implementation of policy requires enabling institutional arrangements. South
Nigeria has several public entities and agencies concerned with ICT, as well as
a national commission to advise on ICT development in the country. These support
ICT in education in various ways as part of their mandates.
The
increasing rollout of competitive
fibre to Nigeria and within Nigerian States and greater penetration of wireless and mobile platforms
have expanded opportunities for connectivity and broadband access. Wi-Fi
and WiMAX especially create the opportunity for wide scale deployment of
wireless access devices. The emergence
of National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Nigeria over the
past ten years has created an important opportunity to extend affordable
non-commercial broadband to education institutions.
South
Nigeria and Kenya stand out as examples where a combination of sector
liberalization and government investment in connectivity to education, working
with NRENs, has led to prices falling to less than 10 per cent of what they
were three years ago There is also value in harnessing ICT to improve educational management and administration (see
Box 4.3).
One
major problem with current management information systems is the lack of
adequate and well-designed policies and strategies for the collection and use
of educational information by both governments and individual
institutions.
There is a need to support Nigerian governments so that they can formulate
cost-effective and sustainable strategies for educational data collection and
use, and for the development of indicators that enable the monitoring of
national and regional education performance. There is also a need to upgrade
current Educational Management Information Systems (EMIS) through
the
adoption of web-enabled tools, and for the sharing of knowledge on
requirements, challenges and opportunities. The National Education Statistical
Information System (NESIS) programme, which has been promoted
by
the Association for Education Development in Nigeria (ADEA) provides a platform
to promote policy and other capacity support for EMIS development in Nigeria. Stands for "Information and
Communication Technologies." ICT refers to technologies that provide
access to information through telecommunications. It is similar to Information Technology (IT), but focuses primarily on communication technologies. This
includes the Internet, wireless networks, cell phones, and other communication
mediums.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) are electronic
technologies used for information storage and retrieval. Development is partly
determined by the ability to establish a synergistic interaction between
technological innovation and human values. The rapid rate at which ICTs have
evolved since the mid 20th century, the convergence and pervasiveness of ICTs,
give them a strong role in development and globalization (Nwagwu, 2006). ICTs
have a significant impact on all areas of human activity (Brakel and Chisenga,
2003).
The field of education has been affected by ICTs, which have
undoubtedly affected teaching, learning, and research (Yusuf, 2005). A great
deal of research has proven the benefits to the quality of education
(Al-Ansari, 2006). ICTs have the potential to accelerate, enrich, and deepen
skills, to motivate and engage students, to help relate school experience to
work practices, create economic viability for tomorrow's workers, as well as strengthening
teaching and helping schools change (Davis and Tearle, 1999; Lemke and
Coughlin, 1998; cited by Yusuf, 2005).
In a rapidly changing world, basic education is essential for an
individual be able to access and apply information. Such ability must find
include ICTs in the global village. The Economic Commission for Africa has
indicated that the ability to access and use information is no longer a luxury,
but a necessity for development. Unfortunately, many developing counties,
especially in Africa, are still low in ICT application and use (Aduwa-Ogiegbean
and Iyamu, 2005).
This
paper focuses on ICT application in Nigerian secondary schools. It particularly
dwells on the importance of ICT and the causes of low levels of
THE USES OF ICT IN NIGERIA SECONDARY SCHOOLS.
Ø ICT is used in making teaching-learning more
interesting.
Ø ICT is used in distance learning programme.
Ø ICT enhances quality of work of both teachers
and students.
Ø It makes teachers to be up-to-date in their
various disciplines.
Ø It is used by the teachers to reach out to
colleagues in other part of the country.
Ø ICT enhances efficiency of workers.
Ø ICT help reduce bureaucracy in administration.
Ø It makes decision-making in the
education sector easy and faster.
Ø It enhances the management of financial
records in schools.
Improved secondary education is essential to the creation of
effective human capital in any country (Evoh, 2007). The need for ICT in
Nigerian secondary schools cannot be overemphasized. In this technology-driven
age, everyone requires ICT competence to survive. Organizations are finding it
very necessary to train and re-train their employees to establish or increase
their knowledge of computers and other ICT facilities (Adomi and Anie, 2006;
Tyler, 1998). This calls for early acquisition of ICT skills by students. The
ability to use computers effectively has become an essential part of everyone's
education.
Skills such as bookkeeping, clerical and administrative work,
stocktaking, and so forth, now constitute a set of computerized practices that
form the core IT skills package: spreadsheets, word processors, and databases
(Reffell and Whitworth, 2002).
The
demand for computer/ICT literacy is increasing in Nigeria, because employees
realize that computers and other ICT facilities can enhance efficiency. On the
other hand, employees have also realized that computers can be a threat to
their jobs, and the only way to enhance job security is to become computer
literate. With the high demand for computer literacy, the teaching and learning
these skills is a concern among professionals (Oduroye, n.d.). This is also
true of other ICT components.
New instructional techniques that use ICTs provide a different
modality of instruments. For the student, ICT use allows for increased
individualization of learning. In schools where new technologies are used,
students have access to tools that adjust to their attention span and provide
valuable and immediate feedback for literacy enhancement, which is currently
not fully implemented in the Nigerian school system (Emuku and Emuku, 1999
& 2000).
ICT application and use will prove beneficial in improving
Nigeria's educational system and giving students a better education. A
technologically-advanced workforce will lead to ICT growth in Nigeria, with the
potential to improve military technology and telecommunications, media
communications, and skilled ICT professionals who will be well-equipped to
solve IT problems in Nigeria and other parts of the world (Goshit, 2006).
CHAPTER TWO
THE PROBLEMS FACING THE USE OF ICT IN NIGERIA SECONDARY SCHOOLS
v Limited/poor information infrastructure
v Lack of/inadequate inadequate ICT facilities in schools
v Frequent electricity interruption
v Non integration into the school curriculum
v Poor ICT policy/project implementation strategy
v Inadequate ICT manpower in the schools
v High cost of ICT facilities/components
v Limited school budget
v Lack of/limited ICT skills among teachers
v Lack of/poor perception of ICTs among teachers and administrators
v Inadequate educational software
v Poor management on the parts of school administrators and
government
v Lack of maintenance culture
v Lack of interest in ICT application/use on the part of students
v ICT facilities unable
to use them regularly.
CONCLUSION AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
“Poor ICT policy/project implementation strategy” attracted 94
respondents (63 percent). The Nigerian Federal Government's 1988 policy
introduced computer education to the high schools (Okebukola, 1997). The only
way this policy was implemented was the distribution of computers to federal
government high schools, which were never used for computer education of the
students. No effort was made to distribute computer to state government or
private schools. Although the government planned to integrate ICTs into the
school system and provide schools with infrastructure, concerted efforts have
not been made to provide facilities and trained personnel. Thus, most schools
do not yet offer ICT training programmes (Goshit, 2006). In
Nigeria, many governments have focused on developing national ICT policies and
National Information and Communication Infrastructure Plans to support their
socio-economic development efforts and policies for ICT in education. Several
Nigerian governments are prioritizing the use of ICT in education, in order to
achieve critical strategic developmental objectives – or at least agreeing policies
to do this. Developing countries, however, have experienced difficulties in
adapting policies and regulations to rapid changes in technology and market
structure. In some instances, policies concerned with ICT and education are not
complemented by policies in other relevant areas, such as telecommunications,
that support such development. Furthermore, ICT policies are not always
accompanied by detailed implementation plans or commitment from government to
implement them.
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