Book of Abstracts e-Asia Conference 2009
Pedagogy Changes for ICT Enabled Primary Education in Sri Lanka M A Kaleelur Rahuman1 and Gihan Wikramanayake2 University of Colombo School of Computing, Colombo, Sri Lanka; email: 1kal@ucsc.cmb.ac.lk and 2 gnw@ucsc.cmb.ac.lk
Arrival and the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) have re-engineered our life by changing human behave. These changes are not only to meet basic needs like contacting a friend overseas, but also to meet fundamental needs like access to education, health and governance. The impact of ICT is much more than a technological evolution. It is a social revolution that has forced different age groups of humans to discover new habits and morals, and to adapt to the global changes in human cultures and life styles. Our education system has to be geared to meet this challenge and has to be aligned with technological advances. The innovative utilization of ICT for education is indispensable since the knowledge and skills are the backbone to change the culture and civilization for a better quality of life. OLPC – One Laptop per Child is an amazing especially designed educational tool. It was introduced to create educational opportunities for world’s poor children who are struggling without access to skilled teachers, ICT awareness, electricity and internet infrastructure. The introduction and implementation of this tool in selected primary schools in Sri Lanka, will impact on teaching learning methodologies in our education system. Existing pedagogical approach in the primary education system in Sri Lanka has to be redesigned to facilitate the identified principals and learning styles of this educational tool. OLPC principals allow each child to keep the tool and use it for primary education with access to internet from childhood days. It helps children to learn by exploring, creating and sharing the knowledge and skills. The Ministry of Education together with its major stakeholders is currently implementing the OLPC pilot project in selected schools in Sri Lanka through readiness, adaption and application of OLPC. They are making the concept aware among stakeholders while addressing three major pedagogical elements, namely content development, teacher training and localization. Teachers who are directly involved with the selected students are trained to create local content for learning. Developing content for primary school children based on formal education curriculum is an innovative idea for Sri Lanka, while the rest of the world is using the OLPCs as an educational tool for informal leaning processes, like collaborative learning, peer learning coinciding with learn while playing concepts. Even though literacy rate in Sri Lanka is high, the childhood creativity and innovative thinking are lacking among our kids. Once the OLPC project is implemented it will not only help students, but also the teachers involved to explore innovation and creativity in primary education. This paper addresses the readiness, adaption and commitment of the teachers on the implementation of the OLPC educational tool. It also conceptualizes the changes required to build an ICT based teaching learning environment and to redesign the pedagogy in childhood education.
117