Need
- Education is a life long process therefore anytime anywhere access to it is the need
- Information explosion is an ever increasing phenomena therefore there is need to get access to this information
- Education should meet the needs of variety of learners and therefore IT is important in meeting this need
- It is a requirement of the society that the individuals should posses technological literacy
- We need to increase access and bring down the cost of education to meet the challenges of illiteracy and poverty-IT is the answer
Importance
- access to variety of learning resources
- immediacy to information
- anytime learning
- anywhere learning
- collaborative learning
- multimedia approach to education
- authentic and up to date information
- access to online libraries
- teaching of different subjects made interesting
- educational data storage
- distance education
- access to the source of information
- multiple communication channels-e-mail,chat,forum,blogs,etc.
- access to open courseware
- better accesses to children with disabilities
- reduces time on many routine tasks
Information Technology in Education
INTRODUCTION
Information Technology in Education, effects of the continuing developments in information technology (IT) on education.
The pace of change brought about by new technologies has had a
significant effect on the way people live, work, and play worldwide. New
and emerging technologies challenge the traditional process of teaching
and learning, and the way education is managed. Information technology,
while an important area of study in its own right, is having a major
impact across all curriculum areas. Easy worldwide communication
provides instant access to a vast array 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.
Significance of IT in education
- Access to variety of learning resources
In the era of technology. IT aids plenty of resources to enhance the
teaching skills and learning ability. With the help of IT now it is
easy to provide audio visual education. The learning resources are being
widens and widen. Now with this vivid and vast technique as part of the
IT curriculum, learners are encouraged to regard computers as tools to
be used in all aspects of their studies. In particular, they need to
make use of the new multimedia technologies to communicate ideas,
describe projects, and order information in their work.
- Immediacy to information
IT has provided immediacy to education. Now in the year of computers
and web networks the pace of imparting knowledge is very very fast and
one can be educated anywhere at any time. New IT has often been
introduced into well-established patterns of working and living without
radically altering them. For example, the traditional office, with
secretaries working at keyboards and notes being written on paper and
manually exchanged, has remained remarkably stable, even if personal
computers have replaced typewriters.
- Any time learning
Now in the year of computers and web networks the pace of imparting
knowledge is very very fast and one can be educated .One can study
whenever he wills irrespective of whether it is day or night and
irrespective of being in India or in US because of the boom in IT.
- Collaborative learning
Now IT has made it easy to study as well as teach in groups or in
clusters. With online we can be unite together to do the desired task.
Efficient postal systems, the telephone (fixed and mobile), and various
recording and playback systems based on computer technology all have a
part to play in educational broadcasting in the new millennium. The
Internet and its Web sites are now familiar to many children in
developed countries and among educational elites elsewhere, but it
remains of little significance to very many more, who lack the most
basic means for subsistence.
- Multimedia approach to education
Audio-Visual Education, planning, preparation, and use of devices and
materials that involve sight, sound, or both, for educational purposes.
Among the devices used are still and motion pictures, filmstrips,
television, transparencies, audiotapes, records, teaching machines,
computers, and videodiscs. The growth of audio-visual education has
reflected developments in both technology and learning theory.
Studies in the psychology of learning suggest that the use of
audio-visuals in education has several advantages. All learning is based
on perception, the process by which the senses gain information from
the environment. The higher processes of memory and concept formation
cannot occur without prior perception. People can attend to only a
limited amount of information at a time; their selection and perception
of information is influenced by past experiences. Researchers have found
that, other conditions being equal, more information is taken in if it
is received simultaneously in two modalities (vision and hearing, for
example) rather than in a single modality. Furthermore, learning is
enhanced when material is organized and that organization is evident to
the student.
These findings suggest the value of audio-visuals in the
educational process. They can facilitate perception of the most
important features, can be carefully organized, and can require the
student to use more than one modality.
- Authentic and up to date information
The information and data which are available on the net is purely correct and up to date.
Internet, a collection of computer networks that operate to
common standards and enable the computers and the programs they run to
communicate directly provides true and correct information.
- Online library
Internets support thousands of different kinds of operational and
experimental services one of which is online library. We can get plenty
of data on this online library.
As part of the IT curriculum, learners are encouraged to regard
computers as tools to be used in all aspects of their studies. In
particular, they need to make use of the new multimedia technologies to
communicate ideas, describe projects, and order information in their
work. This requires them to select the medium best suited to conveying
their message, to structure information in a hierarchical manner, and to
link together information to produce a multidimensional document.
- Distance learning
Distance Learning, method of learning at a distance rather than in a
classroom. Late 20th-century communications technologies, in their most
recent phases multimedia and interactive, open up new possibilities,
both individual and institutional, for an unprecedented expansion of
home-based learning, much of it part-time. The term distance learning
was coined within the context of a continuing communications revolution,
largely replacing a hitherto confusing mixed nomenclature—home study,
independent study, external study, and, most common, though restricted
in pedagogic means, correspondence study. The convergence of increased
demand for access to educational facilities and innovative
communications technology has been increasingly exploited in face of
criticisms that distance learning is an inadequate substitute for
learning alongside others in formal institutions. A powerful incentive
has been reduced costs per student. At the same time, students studying
at home themselves save on travel time and other costs.
Whatever the reasoning, distance learning widens access for
students unable for whatever reason (course availability, geographical
remoteness, family circumstances, individual disability) to study
alongside others. At the same time, it appeals to students who prefer
learning at home. In addition, it appeals to organizers of professional
and business education, providing an incentive to rethink the most
effective way of communicating vital information.
- Better accesses to children with disabilities
Information technology has brought drastic changes in the life of
disabled children. IT provides various software and technique to educate
these poor peoples. Unless provided early with special training, people
profoundly deaf from birth are incapable of learning to speak. Deafness
from birth causes severe sensory deprivation, which can seriously
affect a person's intellectual capacity or ability to learn. A child who
sustains a hearing loss early in life may lack the language stimulation
experienced by children who can hear. The critical period for
neurological plasticity is up to age seven. Failure of acoustic sensory
input during this period results in failure of formation of synaptic
connections and, possibly, an irremediable situation for the child. A
delay in learning language may cause a deaf child's academic progress to
be slower than that of hearing children. The academic lag tends to be
cumulative, so that a deaf adolescent may be four or more academic years
behind his or her hearing peers. Deaf children who receive early
language stimulation through sign language, however, generally achieve
academically alongside their hearing peers.
The integration of information technology in teaching is a
central matter in ensuring quality in the educational system. There are
two equally important reasons for integrating information technology in
teaching. Pupils must become familiar with the use of information
technology, since all jobs in the society of the future will be
dependent on it, and information technology must be used in teaching in
order to improve its quality and make it more effective.
INTRODUCTION
The information society challenges the education system. In recent
years, the speedy, effective and global communication of knowledge has
created a new foundation for co-operation and teamwork, both nationally
and internationally. The increasing role played by information
technology in the development of society calls for an active reaction to
the challenges of the information society.
Already, new and greater demands are being made as to the core
qualifications of individuals, as well as to their understanding and
knowledge of the consequences of the introduction of information
technology for the work and organisation of a company. Companies are no
longer forced to gather all their functions in one place. The
knowledge-intensive functions such as development and marketing can be
sited in countries where the labour market can supply highly educated
employees, whilst production itself can be moved to low wage countries.
The result is the efficient handling, processing, co-ordination and
administration of company resources, which is decisive for the
competitiveness of the company.In a society which is becoming
increasingly dependent on information and the processing of knowledge,
great demands are therefore made that the individual should have a solid
and broad educational foundation on which to build. Educational policy
in the information society must ensure that:
- IT qualifications are developed by means of their integration in all activities in the education sector and
- The individual citizen must have an active and critical attitude to developments and not passively allow technological development to set the pace.
IT educational policy must ensure:
- Up-to-date qualifications in the information society
- Up-to-date qualifications gained against the background of a high general level of education in the population will be decisive if Denmark is to maintain competitiveness and its share of the global labour market in the information society. IT skills and IT understanding are thus central prerequisites for the individual, both now and especially in the future.
The advantage of using information technology is that time-consuming
work routines can increasingly be performed by means of this technology
and time can thus be devoted instead to communicating and informing, to
the processing of information and the production of knowledge.
