20th Anniversary Supplements Archive

Use of ICT in teaching

M.M. Akash

Photo: Star

THIS brief note has three sections. In the first section I have tried to analyze the potential merits and demerits of using ICT in the process of teaching. The second section describes the stage of development of ICT in Bangladesh, particularly focusing on its use in the education sector. The third section identifies the three crucial constraints against further development of ICT in the education sector of Bangladesh. The paper ends with some concluding suggestions for future.

Teaching Profession and ICT
Every human being is a lifelong student. But only some of them become teachers and teach others i.e. they try to communicate what they have learnt to their students. So a teacher has to learn continuously and teach continuously throughout his/her life. He/she must remain simultaneously a student as well as a teacher if he/she wants to be dynamic in his/her noble vocation.

I think, dynamic teaching is possible only if the concerned teacher continuously engages himself/herself in expanding his/her own knowledge base and also continuously improves his/her skill in delivering that knowledge to his/her students more and more effectively. Keeping a balance between these two tasks is indeed a hard task.

ICT technology can be of immense help to a dynamic teacher because it can enhance the dual capacity of both learning and teaching quite easily and cheaply. Today almost all branches of knowledge are stored in the so called “Idiot Box” and anybody with an internet access and some basic operational skill can have access to that knowledge with a single clique on the mouse and that also is generally completely free of cost! And if some ancillary arrangements and soft wares are available, e.g. power point programme, multimedia, video system, etc. then delivery of knowledge by the teacher in the class room also becomes far more effective and interesting than the dry lecture method. Thus ICT technology has revolutionized the scope of both learning and teaching.

Before the advent of this new ICT technology the main source of knowledge was books and the main storehouse of books was the library. Now in a small notebook type thing I can store 15000 e-books and therefore may carry a moving full library in my pocket!

Is ICT an unmixed blessing? No, off course not. First of all there is a problem of choice and a problem of “Authenticity”. Today not only knowledge is stored in the “Idiot Box”, many idiotic things are also there side by side competing with the good knowledge. So the role of the teacher becomes very important in this context. He/she has to decide by using his/her value judgments to choose the proper knowledge from what is now a days called “The Flood of Information and mis-information”.

Even the value judgments of the children can be affected by the ICT quite negatively at least in the field of culture. Especially for the people of the East where this technology has come late, faces this problem of intrusion of alien culture through computer net work into their societies. We also know that the computer was invented in the west and its fundamental language structure has a western bias. The vocabulary of computer has been developed in the framework of war games in the west. Let me cite a few examples of such aggressively biased key words from the dictionary of computer e.g. escape, control, shift, delete, cap-lock, command, etc. In addition to this fundamental western cultural bias, ICT has a biased ownership structure. It is mainly owned and controlled by a few giant companies who have already imposed various intellectual property rights against free access to the ICT.

But even after recognizing all these shortcomings, we still should not reject this wonderful technology. If we reject it or try to restrict its use by closing all or some of our windows and thereby try to remain safe in our own cocoon from alien influences then at the same time this would deprive us from all the fresh wind and wisdom of the whole world. It will be like throwing away the baby along with the dirty water. The real solution lies in preparing our own “Human ware” who is able to create and choose new hardware and software suitable for our own countries. We should remember that winning the ICT war will need stronger hardware, more improved software and also a wise and smart human ware.

Application Of ICT In The Field Of Education: Bangladesh Case
The present Government of Bangladesh has shown a strong commitment for using ICT in all the fields including education. At present the matter is directly looked after by the Prime Minister herself. There is also a very knowledgeable freedom fighter minister in charge of the ministry of science, information and technology. He is perhaps the main driver of the so called “Digital Revolution” of Bangladesh. The vision of the minister has been spelt out by himself in his two strategic slogans:

Slogan: one
“Path of Progress is Technology
Digital Bangladesh for Everybody”

Slogan: two
“Hardware, Software, Human-ware
The trio makes a victory,
But still man is the main,
Otherwise all else is a waste”

The above two slogans apparently show a strong pro-people approach from the top to spread ICT facility for all and also the strategy of principal stress on developing the necessary human resources for carrying the ICT forward. Currently there is an umbrella project titled “A2I” (Access to Information) under which various developmental works are going on for spreading the use of ICT in Bangladesh. This project is financed by UNDP and it is directly monitored by the Prime-Minister. Every six month a meeting is held under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister in order to monitor the progress in this front of ICT in general and all secretaries of all ministries have to be present there. One of the main thrust of this project is the use of ICT in the field of education.

It has been decided to use lap-top instead of desk-top because of its more economic use of electricity, which is still the chief constraint against the development of ICT in Bangladesh. Ideas have been also floated to use solar energy to charge these laptops in the remote village schools where electricity is still unavailable. Rupees 3000 million

(Almost 43 million dollar) has been allocated under this project to equip 30000 higher secondary schools with one lap-top and one projector for each school. The precondition for receiving these equipments will be the training of the teaching staff of the selected school. The content of training will be very simple. The teachers will be taught the basic operations about the computer along with the techniques of simple power point presentations as well as how to download various study materials from authentic educational sites and then preparing their classroom presentations to supplement their lectures. For example, today a biology teacher can get vivid colourful animated clips and videos of various organic functions of the heart of man digestive system of man, breathing mechanism of man, etc from various educational sites without any cost and make his/her biology class more interesting and realistic. A botany teacher can download the pictures of “Photosynthesis” from the national geography magazine and turn that abstract topic into a beautiful and concrete presentation. There are thousands of other examples of such effective teaching with the help of the ICT.

Already by using computer programme, the admission system of the universities has become corruption free. In the distance learning programme ICT is already playing a very important role. At present there is a programme for setting up information centers with such internet facilities in the 4501 unions of the country. This programme has become very popular and already 1102 such information centers have been established by July, 2010. These centers make available various kinds of useful information to the villagers and enhance their capacity to solve their livelihood problems. Thus the role of ICT to promote mass education has a huge potentiality in Bangladesh.

However, the overall progress of ICT use for education is still very insignificant in Bangladesh. Our education minister has recently reported that out of 18700 Government and Non-government higher secondary schools only 3000 schools have a modern computer laboratory.

Crucial Constraints against the use of ICT in the field of Education

The number one constraint is the electricity constraint.

Secondly the old teachers should change their mind set and be motivated and trained to learn the necessary minimum so that they can effectively use the computer for learning as well as teaching.

The last constraint is the supply of enough computers, ancillary machines and hard wares. Along with the computer the broad band or fast internet browsing facility should be provided at least in some central place accessible by both students and teachers. The well developed mobile telephone system can be of great help in this respect.

With the spread of ICT, we must also provide the maintenance services and that aspect must also be taken care of simultaneously otherwise it can become a serious bottleneck for the sustainability of the whole system.

Conclusion
I believe, the ICT has opened up a new horizon for the world of Education. It has for the first time made knowledge relations more democratic, more socially owned, more easily accessible, cheaper and more transparent. The wonderful economy of scale effect in the field of ICT is quickly making this technology cheaper and more easily available to all irrespective of class and creed! There is an apprehension today that the vested interest may feel disturbed by the democratic free flow of information and may soon try to stop this democratization process of knowledge or at least put a rein on its development.. Some people think that a new type of “Information War” can break out in near future and a crisis may set in this world. But recent examples prove that whatever reactionary steps the vested interest may take, the ICT technology itself can and will create a countervailing force to fight it back more effectively.

We teachers feel that till today our main mode of learning and teaching has remained mainly dependent upon two major faculties: Reading and Writing. Human beings have actually three other faculties for gathering knowledge, e.g. 'Talking”, “Seeing” and “Hearing”. The new generation of ICT, if properly used can help us to explore these underutilized faculties of knowledge. Computer will never be a substitute of teacher, but it can make teaching more lively and smart.

The writers is Professor of Economics Department, Dhaka University.