Internet in class

Today’s students want to “produce” and “discover” simultaneously. So knowledge and knowing are linked all the time. When students all have access to the internet while in class, students could easily access the content and soon the class could take part in discussions, inquiries and critical thinking.

Integrate ICT's into everyday teaching

Getting schools to meet the requirements as set out in the e-education white paper of 2004, requires a holistic approach. This approach should focus on school infrastructure (access to technology, etc.), developing specific knowledge and skills relating to ICTs within schools (administrative staff, educators and learners), support and buy-in from management structures within schools, the districts and on provincial level. The most important aspect that will ensure success in the effective use of ICT in classrooms is educators’ skills in actually integrating ICTs into their everyday teaching. Not seeing technology as a mere add-on, but rather an essential part of all teaching and learning activities in their classrooms.

Teacher training

By increasing educators’ knowledge and competencies in using specific software packages will not have a very big impact on the effective use of ICTs at this particular school. The focus should, at this stage, rather move to providing the educators with training and support in effectively integrating ICTs to enhance their teaching and their learners’ learning. Training opportunities should focus on showing the educators the value of technology, how it can enhance teaching and learning and how to locate and access technology resources that will support teaching and learning in their specific subjects or learning areas. At a later stage, using technology to track learner progress through the curriculum and their use of technology resources, could also be addressed.

Let us learn from one another

A certain teacher wanted to change her classroom from a teacher-centered (teacher lecturing) location to one that was student-centered and project-based. Her goals for the reorganization were: to allow for more learner-centered work, raise chances for shared work, increase the resources that learners had available for research and learning, and to maximize the use of the limited technology resources in her classroom. The teacher redesigned her classroom in four areas, each taking up about a quarter of the room- A technology center, a group work area, a research/writing center, and a “conversation pit”. The areas were separated by portable office walls. The teacher had 6 computers in the class which she distributed over the 4 centers.

Learner activities

The Professional Competency Continuum: Coughlin, Lemke, describes the following activities.
It was Poetry week at a certain school. Learners have been doing an intense study of poetry in several forms – books, literary journals and e-mail discussions with poets who share their ideas on the conditions for a good poem. Learners broke up into smaller groups. One group decided to draft an online document of poetry. They are requesting poems from students around the country and plan to put the selected ones to their Web site. Another group is writing Web content for a series of background pages on different forms of poetry. A design team is working on the construction for the Web site.
A “communications and marketing team” begins planning the message requesting student contributions.

Research only point to positive results . . .

All the research that has been done show that the use of ICT's in education does enhance the quality of teaching and learning. ICT influences pupils’ understanding, their motivation, use of learning strategies, their mental engagement and the context of learning. Pupil’s scientific knowledge grew tremendously and pupils displayed a great amount of motivation and self empowerment. With all these wonderful research results I find it hard to believe that teachers are still reluctant to use this powerful tool in their classrooms. . . .

Primary School learners in Finlad

I recently found an interesting article. It was about primary school learners in Finland who studied wild courtyard plants. The topic of the project was “the influence of growth factors for courtyard plants”. The 10-lesson project was coordinated, documented and shared using a Web-based teamwork environment. The goal of the project was,to introduce “progressive inquiry”. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?Progressive inquiry). A web-based learning environment – “FRONTER” http://com.fronter.info was used for this purpose. So learners were sharing and commenting (in groups)online on ideas and explanations. Learners (9 and 10 years olds) were actually communicating and sharing their results with other learners in other crounties. I find this fascinating!!