ICT (INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES) BASED EDUCATION Pedro José LEIVA PADILLA Leiva Formacion – Spain
General Principles The use of ICT to enhance learning Learning in classrooms is mediated by tools and artefacts. These include books, film, objects, language and people. In the twenty-first century, ICT has an especially prominent, and growing, role. In March 2005, the DfES published its eStrategy ‘Harnessing Technology: Transforming learning and children’s services’. This describes the use of digital and interactive technologies to achieve a more personalised approach to education and children’s services. A group of school-based projects has explored the uses of ICT in teaching, learning and assessment in different subjects, and from pre-school settings to the end of secondary education. ICT is not intrinsically good or bad, but depends for its value on how it is used. Quality learning requires attention to be paid to the relationships between the use of new technologies and subject matter, the nature of the learner, and approaches to teaching and assessment.
Background to ICT in Science Recent developments In the past, hardware and software limitations have tended to reduce the real impact of ICT on supporting science education. Recently, however, hardware costs have fallen, hardware has become more reliable and the ICT skills of teachers have improved. These factors combine to make significant progress in the use of ICT to support science teaching a real possibility. In recent years there has been a shift from the use of science as a vehicle through which students learn and use IT skills to the use of ICT skills as tools to assist learning in science. There has also been growing interest in the use of ICT to support whole class teaching and learning to complement ICT based activities for individual students. This has led to greater emphasis on the role of the teacher and a recognition of the need for training to help them learn operational skills to use new equipment and software and application skills to manage learning effectively using new technologies The benefits of ICT in science • There is considerable research evidence that learners are more highly motivated when their learning is supported by ICT. See Newton and Rogers, Teaching Science with ICT for a review of research evidence. • Students are more engaged in activities, they show increased interest and demonstrate a longer attention span. • ICT can provide access to a huge range of resources that are of high quality and relevant to scientific learning. In some cases the resources fill gaps where there are no good conventional alternatives; in other cases they complement existing resources. In some cases ICT resources are less good than conventional alternatives and do not add to learning.
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