7. “ICT in the teaching of English and Community Development”

“ICT in the teaching of English and Community Development”

Co-authored by:
Mr Mayur Parmar
mayur_vvnagar@yahoo.co.in
Lecturer
H M Patel Institute of English Training & Research
Vallabh Vidyanagar (Gujarat) India

Mr Kaushal Kotadia
kaushalkotadia@gmail.com
www.kaushalkotadia.blogspot.com
www.kotadiakaushal.blogspot.com
www.remediesathand.blogspot.com
Resource Person
H M Patel Career Development Centre
Vallabh Vidyanagar (Gujarat) India

Earlier the phrase information technology popularly known as IT was the buzzword. However, in the recent years IT has incorporated one more letter C in it making itself ICT. The C in ICT has been introduced because it has become obvious that the technology is at least as important as a means of communication as a device for handling information. Being communication tools, computers have an obvious place in language teaching and learning.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is a broad term that covers all information handling tools. It includes a varied set of goods, applications and services that are used to produce, store, process, distribute and exchange information.

They include:
• Traditional ICT: telephone, radio and television
• New ICT: Personal Computers, mobile phones, satellite and wireless
technologies, Internet and the World Wide Web

Increasingly, the demarcations between these media or delivery channels are shaping, as the world becomes more networked - interconnected telephone services, standardized computer hardware, and seamless data transmission services. Today, we are witnessing a new revolution of the 21st century that will shape the knowledge society: “the Digital Revolution”. Driven by the accelerating conference between the internet, broadcast media and ICTs, this revolution indeed affects all aspects of our life – the way we learn, work and communicate with one another as well as the way governments interact with civil society. New opportunities are opening up to those who can make effective use of information technologies, but a large percentage of people are not aware of this digital revolution and opportunities, they don’t have access to those technologies and information which are also not affordable.

Some feel that it is a new threat to the development. At the same time, the digital revolution risks to exclude others from reaping its fruits, thus increasing existing inequalities. This gap between those who have access to ICT and those who lack of it has become well known as the “digital divide”. Digital Divide is the “unequal access to information and communication technologies (ICT) between the information haves and have-nots.” The digital divide reflects, in a large part, other social and economic divides – not only between industrial and developing nations, but also within countries. The divide exists among developed countries and the less developed countries as well as within one country among the urban and rural areas, across people’s ages and levels of education. The divide also exists between those who are literate and illiterate, those who are normal and those who are disabled.Bridging the digital divide has emerged as a key challenge for development – and as the only hope for the marginalized part of the world to benefit from the opportunities offered by the global knowledge economy.

Under the development strategy of developing world, ICT is to address among other topics such as education, knowledge through human development. Poverty reduction and the enhancement of the quality of life for the people are still on the high-priority list and ICTs can play a great role in facilitating and accelerating. ICTs play a great role in this strategy, and in doing so, the issue of “digital divide” must be considered. To bridge the digital divide has become a big challenge facing developing countries. ICT is considered as the major information infrastructure for improving the quality of access and distribution of information for the citizens.

In the past, some widely used approaches to foreign language teaching have assumed strict control of pupils’ behaviour. Textbooks can be used to make pupils act in highly predictable ways such as answering questions about given text, practicing saying and writing specified vocabulary items, responding to pronunciation exercises or grammar tasks in the textbook. The teacher can be fairly certain that few, if any, unexpected language or other challenges will occur. Most uses of ICT do not lend themselves to this kind of teacher control. The Internet is a good example. Millions of texts are available. Teachers can never know when they will have to respond to questions like "What does the word mean? How do we pronounce it? Is it good English? Is it taboo? etc." Once pupils have learned basic ways of obtaining information, they can find out many things for themselves that the teacher may not know much or anything about. Successful use of ICT is inconsistent with complete teacher control of what happens in the language classroom. However, that does not mean that teachers should not guide learners or set them tasks leading to specified solutions, set time limits and so on.

The C in ICT stands for communication. The primary purpose of ICT in foreign language teaching must be to stimulate real communication between pupils (for example, within a class), communication between teachers and their pupils, for example, presentation, comment, advice, explanation, suggestion and instruction. It has an obvious role in furthering communication between learners from different countries who are learning English as a vehicle for international contact and understanding.

Can ICT take a reformative measure in improving teacher competency?
It will not be an exaggeration if one says that the present and the future of education and the society lie on the teachers, and especially the quality of teachers. Not surprisingly, considerable importance has been given to teacher education in all the Five Year Plans and in all the Commissions and Committees on Education in India. The Kothari Education Commission had noted that the fate of India was being shaped in the classrooms, and that the teachers were the most important determinant of this. However, with increasing use of technology and blended learning, the fate today is shaped more outside the classroom, and the definition of a teacher has changed considerably.

In parallel with the development of educational technology itself, use of ICT in teacher education has evolved from the traditional audio-visual method to the present multimedia-based online learning/online professional development.

A New ICT Framework

From many research studies and experiences, two important aspects are coming to face with regard to ICT integration with teacher education:
i) teachers need to be reflective in what they do in the form of teaching and facilitating student learning
ii) the offline community of practice and the networked community of professional community need to be intergrated into a comprehensive framework of continuing professional development.

Some of the important skills associated with reflection included:
Self-awareness: Ability to analyze feelings, especially examining how a situation has affected the individual and how the individual has affected the situation

Description: Ability to recognize and recollect accurately the key features of an experience and/or situation

Critical analysis: Ability to examine the knowledge components of a situation, identifying existing knowledge, challenging assumptions, and imagining and exploring alternatives
Synthesis: Ability to integrate new knowledge with previous knowledgeEvaluation: Ability to make judgment about the value of something

It must be underlined that in any sort of ICT intervention in teacher education and/or any ICT-integrated teacher education, reflection needs to play a critical role in contextualizing teacher education practices as also to critically reflect on teacher education as professional discipline and professional practice. The framework given above depicts an integrated and comprehensive online teacher professional development in which culture, professional community, curriculum design, online presence, and individual and collaborative reflection contribute to transformation in professional identify and professional practice.

Information and Knowledge: ICT for Education
Today a large percentage of poor population of the globe lives in the rural areas and ICT could bring a substantial development if ICT could be used appropriately. It is important to consider following factors in mainstreaming ICT into rural development and poverty reduction strategies

· ICTs are a powerful tool for sustainable development, empowerment and poverty reduction.
· ICTs are a component of a broader strategy to sustainable development and should not be seen as a panacea for all development problems.
· ICT encompass a full range of technologies – not only the Internet, but also traditional devices, such as radios or TV, which are the most widely used tools in developing countries.
· The effective use of ICT is not just a question of infrastructure, but also requires an appropriate institutional and regulatory framework and human capacity.

When mainstreaming ICT into rural development and poverty reduction it is important to aim at following:

· To raise standard of living of people
· To ensure the rights of information access through the use of ICT
· To learn from the global knowledge and contribute to it
· To provide more opportunities to people for education, culture and other

Providing access to relevant information
· ICT can help improve the economic and social situation of the poor by enabling people
· to obtain relevant information on market prices, weather conditions, medical assistance, land and political rights as well as welfare or credit schemes
· increase their competitiveness and market access
· train themselves via e-learning, thus making them responsible for their own development.

Facilitating communication and network building

By facilitating a new level of “many-to-many” information, ICT offer an interactive and decentralized platform that enables people to
· share knowledge and build networks
· promote their interest and rights more efficiently
· influence more effectively, rapidly and collectively political decisions that affect their lives
· communicate more effectively, thus enhancing intercultural understanding
The initial project indicates that the use of new technologies may enable communities to lean forward what previously have been seen to be necessary stages in the growth of educational provision and the development of a body of knowledge in a community, but only to a limited extent. ICT has already proven to be an ideal vehicle for the distribution of ideas, initiatives and material, directly into areas that are difficult to reach by other means. This project requires testing out and extending the use of ICT in non-formal education and has achieved a measure of success in doing this. However, if the essential spread of knowledge and information is not to be slowed down, low-tech methods of production and delivery must be developed beside their high-tech equivalents. Similarly, the modes and quality both of the material itself and the delivery of it in the regional centres and satellites must illustrate greater variety and adaptation to specific user need. There is currently no differentiation according to need or experience, and this is something that any future development will have to address.