ICT–The Dawn of a New Age of Teaching or the Barrier to Successful Quality Teaching?

Abstract

Information and communications technology (ICT) has become a means for students to access a wealth of information from the internet, create digitally and visually enhanced documents, and be assessed on the basis of electronic documents and PowerPoint presentations. At the same time, in my practicums I noticed how the ways teachers chose to integrate ICT into their teaching sometimes had huge benefits for the students but in other cases could halt or diminish their learning potential. Even worse was when ICT was ignored in favour of outdated learning experiences due to lack of teacher training or the confidence to integrate ICT to ensure learning. As a pre-service teacher I found that using ICT was a successful way to engage students while simultaneously catering for different types of learners. Especially important is the laptop computer, which even technologically less competent teachers utilise to meet their day-to-day requirements. Even more impressive is how students pick up ICT skills at a young age and gain more proficiency than many adults, demonstrating a maturity and concentration not shown in other activities, as well as an ability to self-manage, solve problems and help each other in their work. Educators not only need to be ICT proficient, but also to include as much ICT learning experience as possible within an already crowded and demanding Australian Curriculum.