Teaching of ICT in Secondary Schools-Cameroon
According to Ofodu (2007) the term Information and Communication Technology (ICT) refers to forms of technology that are used for communication and to transmit, store, create, share or exchange information. This broad definition of ICT includes technologies such as: radio, television, video, telephone (both fixed line and mobile), computer and network hardware and software; as well as the equipment and services associated with these technologies, such as electronic mail, text messaging and radio broadcasts.
This chapter looks at the objectives, benefit and role of ICT in Secondary School and the obstacles encounter in the teaching and learning of ICT. Finally it will also look at didactics and pedagogy of ICT and those competences an ICT teacher is suppose to have.
2.1 Objectives of ICT in Secondary Schools. 18
2.2 Problems Encountered in Teaching and Learning ICT in Secondary Schools. 19
2.3 ICT Teachers’ Competencies. 20
2.4 ICT Didactics. 22
2.4.1 Framework for ICT Didactic. 23
2.4.2 Current State of ICT Didactics. 25
2.4.3 ICT as a Practical Subject 25
2.4.4 ICT as a Rapidly Changing Subject 26
2.5 Conclusion. 27
2.1 Objectives of ICT in Secondary Schools
The general objective to begin ICT as a discipline in secondary schools is to meet up with the goal to train students who will be professionals in Information and Communication Technology in future to change the socio-economic state to tie with globalization. ICT as a school subject will help students develop skills that will permit the students at the end of their studies to be self-employed and easily integrated into the working population for better products. This objective is also confirmed by NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa Development) which recognizes that, the key issue in Africa is the development of human resources.
It is also to prepare the students to fully use technologies in their daily life;
- to select appropriate Information and Communication technology tools for a given task;
- to identify specific strengths and weaknesses of technology resources;
- to communicate to a variety of audiences using ICT tools;
- to use a variety of technological tools for data collection and analysis;
- to present and publish information with interactive multi-media features ;
- to be able to use on line information resources for collaboration and communication with others to build content- related knowledge bases;
- to develop strategies to find relevant and appropriate electronic information sources.
2.2 Problems Encountered in Teaching and Learning ICT in Secondary Schools.
The teaching and learning of ICT in secondary schools since its initiation has faced a lot of difficulties at the level of infrastructures, curriculum, teachers, content as well as Teaching/learning methods. According to Tchinda, T. Josué (2007) some of these difficulties include;
- Infrastructure: insufficient infrastructure is one of the serious problem the teaching and learning of ICT faces, for example the teaching of some programmes and manipulation of some application software is difficult because of lack of enough computers for practical lessons and didactic materials which can assist students out of school to learn ICT ;also lack of multimedia centers to assist students and teachers to carry out research in schools and low maintenance rate of the few equipment available also prevent students to develop technological and manipulating skills;
- Pedagogic resources: lack of textbooks and pamphlets to assist teachers and students to work with causes a lot of problems since almost everything taught is gotten from the internet. This may mislead one because not all material could be valuable and correct;
- Teachers training: at the level of the teachers training, there is still lack of well-structured training programme for ICT pedagogy; this is because most the teachers teaching ICT now are not trained.
- Power supply: most rural areas lack electricity and those that have suffer from constant current shortage which hinders the effective use of computers to do practical work;
- motivation: most students don’t yet know the importance of learning ICT in our secondary schools;
- curriculum: the curriculum for ICT subject is still at the initial stage and not well-defined to meet up with school programme and the time allocated for the teaching of ICT does not tie with that of the programme which makes it difficult for the teacher to fully give out what they prepare resulting to low assimilation rate.
- Teaching approach: ICT is being taught using the traditional teaching methods which need to integrate new ICT pedagogy;
- Finance: despite the recognized roles of Information and Communication Technologies to improve the quality and quantity of education, ICT remains a low policy or financial priority in most educational systems especially in Africa. Most countries in the region lack the local capacity and finance essential for a sustainable teaching and learning of ICT;
- Another difficulty faced is the cyber teaching of ICT which counteracts at times the students ideas with that of the ICT curriculum and the methods used to teach the content.
As concern solutions to the problems stated above, the government has to an extent resolve the case of teachers training by creating a department for computer science in all the teacher training colleges in the country. Also the next chapter of this work is intended to resolve the problem of content and teaching approach to an extent.
2.3 ICT Teachers’ Competencies
There are general competencies and abilities common to all approaches to infusing ICT in learning and the management of learning. Infusing ICT across the curriculum to enhance learning and the management of learning leads teachers to an understanding of how to transform their teaching practice as well as the learning of their students.
According to UNESCO (2002) teachers should have the following competencies:
- Understanding why, when, where, and how ICT tools will contribute to learning objectives; and choosing from among a wide range of ICT tools those that are most appropriate to stimulate students’ learning:
- choosing ICT tools and teaching methods that integrate ICT into the whole curriculum;
- choosing and recommending ICT tools and teaching methods appropriate to individual students’ learning objectives;
- emphasizing the quality of what students produce and the contribution to individual learning goals and levels of attainment;
- planning a whole learning programme that allows a range of ICT tools and teaching methods to be used, as and when required;
- choosing tools and teaching methods that allow the teacher and student to manage their own learning.
- Managing whole school and classroom-based environments, and teamwork to achieve learning objectives:
- managing learning environments that contribute to the use of different ICT tools and teaching methods;
- understanding differences between students according to their competencies in using ICT, and having available strategies to manage differences as students progress;
- managing difficulties that can arise when using ICT to minimize impact on planned lesson objectives;
- creating learning situations such that students manage their own learning;
- infusing ICT-based and non-ICT-based media, such as books and video, into learning programmes;
- assessing the levels of attainment of individual students when working collaboratively.
- Infusing multimedia presentations into whole class, group or individual teaching, and learning to increase access to learning programmes:
- ensuring that the most appropriate media are built into learning programmes, that learning is accessible to all students irrespective of ability, special need, or preferred learning style;
- varying the kind of presentation, documents or other media according to the main goals and the chosen teaching method;
- analyzing a presentation for legibility, structure, coherence with teaching objectives, and suitability for students.
- Analyzing multimedia learning environments:
- utilizing web-based learning spaces and environments;
- including CD-ROMs, web sites, video and audio, courseware;
- assessing the contribution of different activities to learners and the lesson objectives;
- analyzing the specific contribution of ICT tools to individual student learning.
- Supporting students to find, analyze and synthesize information from disparate Internet and school-based learning environments:
- Utilizing a range of communication tools to collaborate with colleagues, with students, and other learning communities beyond the school.
- Using ICT more proficiently, regularly taking part in professional development, and participating in teaching experiments and developments:
- participating in, and contributing to, group discussions on the use of ICT; using ICT tools (forums, conferencing, bulletin boards, email) to collaborate in the improvement of teaching and learning and management of learning processes.
- supporting individual students and groups of students to perform complex web searches;
- supporting students in managing, criticizing, synthesizing, and presenting learning processes and products using ICT tools.
2.4 ICT Didactics
ICT didactics consist of two things “didactics” and “software”. ICT didactics are programmes (interactive software) and tools that can assist teachers and students to learn ICT to develop skills. It could be a document (paper or numerical support), aimed to train oneself using software. It is thus a material used by the teacher to prepare and deliver lectures as well as tools used by learner to assimilate their lectures.
Didactic of informatics and information and communication technology use computer and other technological tools to teach and learn. These materials consist of CD-Rom, flash, diskette, multimedia projectors, whiteboards, and bold markers to prepare and deliver lectures in secondary schools. So far most secondary schools in Cameroon use the same didactic materials (blackboard, chalk, textbooks though limited) used in the traditional style of teaching to deliver lectures of ICT. As of now, for the student-centered approach the common didactic material used is the computer and application software.
The diffusion of ICT pedagogical innovations is dependent on suitable textbooks, teaching material and learning resources, which adequately address the underlying methods, principles, concepts, and ideas. The lack of descriptions on the relationship between concepts prevents teachers from understanding software tools as a whole. To compensate the lack of practical learning material, it is of crucial importance to provide learning material and documented experiences from previous project reports that teachers may explore and study, and eventually reuse with some modifications.
Although the government through the Ministry of Secondary Education has defined a curriculum for ICT subject, the didactic material that accompanied this curriculum is still unclear. This calls for the need to conceive and design ICT didactic that could be used to facilitate the teaching and learning of ICT in secondary school.
Furthermore, the introduction of the teaching of ICT which gives just the curriculum and certain objectives expected from students does not yet give the skills and didactic skills teachers need to acquire in order to teach ICT as a subject. The lack of ICT didactic framework therefore, has to be integrated in both theoretical and practical lessons of ICT.
According to Hadjerrouit, S. (2008) ICT didactic consists of six basic stages for facilitating teaching and learning processes; i.e. planning, design, instruction, assessment, evaluation, and feedback :
. Figure3: Didactics of ICT as iterative process and feedback loop with six stages
- Planning
It is important to plan ICT didactic for teaching and learning processes. This may help specify didactical factors that could help in teaching and learning of ICT. It is the stage of collection of data from the existing educational environment to assist the person conceiving the material to be able to conceive an appropriate material to help in ICT pedagogy. There are some factors that hinder the effective planning of ICT didactics such as the subject content, topics, associated skills, teacher and students behavior, learning and pedagogic strategies and assessment procedures. To therefore conceive a didactic material you have to take into consideration the content of the lesson, students’ level and pre-requisite knowledge and skill level, the learning and teaching methods because each method has its own didactic material, learning outcome and the learning platform infrastructure. Taking these as a yard stick for the conception of a didactic material will produce tool that will assist teachers with their instructional processes that will fit their pedagogic styles.
- Design
This stage uses the information from the first stage to transform and convert it to didactical concepts that could help teachers to bridge the gap between general didactical knowledge and specific ICT knowledge. This approach leads to the change of pedagogic strategies based on three steps: presentation, knowledge construction and discussion.
- Presentation
The goal of this step is generating understanding of ICT concepts through situated examples, visualizations, and procedure overview.
- Construction
The objective of the construction step is to let students construct their own knowledge through involvement in realistic problem solving. The aim is to enable each student to construct ICT knowledge at his/her own pace, and from his/her prerequisites. The teacher works as mentor and facilitator of learning, not as a transmitter of knowledge. In addition, students could work together and collaborate in order to improve their learning. This fits well both with the cognitive and the constructivist learning theory.
- Discussion
In the discussion step, students get the opportunity to raise questions regarding the specific ICT exercises or more general problems about the lesson. In this phase, collaborative learning is done through teacher-managed dialogue with the students. This fits well with the social constructivist learning theory.
- Instruction
Instruction involves the performance of a variety of teaching and classroom management activities such as proper rearrangement of didactics materials to assist students better understand the subject taught in classrooms.
- Assessment
The methods or didactic material used by teachers to assess students has an effect in the learning process. There are basically two forms of assessment, formative and summative assessment. The formative assessment permits the teacher to use for example oral questions to engage the students in a reflection exercise on what has been taught to grade their understanding and try to improve on the teaching for better understanding of the subject. The summative assessment summarizes students’ learning at some point in time, mostly at the end of a course or year to assess their understanding level of the subject.
- Evaluation
This phase helps teachers to develop their own ability to self-evaluate their own ICT teaching. During the teaching process, teachers benefit from evaluating and reflecting on how they have achieved their teaching goals. They may ask the following questions: What difficulties were encountered in each stage of the instructional process? What caused the difficulties and how could they be overcome? What general principles may be extracted from the students’ learning experiences? What patterns can be perceived in the problems presented in the construction and dialogue steps?
- Feedback
Feedback stage gives global information on the failures and successes in teaching and learning ICT in a classroom (theory or practical) to assist the teachers redesign their teaching material and make it better in relation to the results.
According to Rautopuro et al (2006); there are three separate aspects of information and communication technology (ICT) in school education:
- Using ICT as a tool to support teaching and learning processes, for example using a word processor, spreadsheet or database in other subject areas such as mathematics or science.
- Learning through ICT where the ICT facility becomes the whole learning environment by providing learning materials, such as LMS or Web-based learning.
- Learning ICT as a subject, that is to say learning the knowledge, concepts, skills, and processes of ICT.
Using ICT as a tool and learning through ICT offer very little opportunity for students to learn the knowledge, concepts, and skills needed to master ICT as a subject. Learning ICT is more than the ability to operate and use a computer system. Hence, the acquisition of technical skills is only part of the problems encountered in teaching and learning ICT as a subject. Indeed, ICT education includes a sophisticated set of higher-order skills and cognitive abilities, such as analysing, designing, implementing, collecting and retrieving, organizing and managing, interpreting and representing, evaluating and creating information (Drenoyianni, 2004).
ICT as a practical subject deals with the ability to make use of software for problem solving. It requires the acquisition of a number of ICT skills, e.g. analysing the problem, designing a model, understanding the functions and the overall principles of the software, implementing the right sequence of software instructions for problem solving, creating associations in the students’ language, transferring previously acquired skills to the software, etc.
According to Hammond (2004) ICT can be seen as a practical subject and used the term ‘practical’ in four major contexts.
Firstly, ICT is practical because it is a ‘hands-on’ subject in which students generally spent a lot of time interacting with a computer. At a simple level this give students variety during lessons. For example, the process of text composition in an ICT lesson with pen and paper can be compare in that during the ICT lesson, pupils are involved in copying and pasting of text, reformatting text, inserting and modifying graphics and file management. This gives students the choices of producing and presenting their work and raises their sense of control. The opportunity to easily edit their work led to a sense of achievement. In an ICT lesson students also have more opportunities for going beyond the confines of the task.
Secondly, ICT is practical because what is learned in ICT lessons can be put into good vocational use. It is universally believed that ICT skills are needed at work places and so the acquisition of ICT skills would enhance students’ work prospects which is one the important role and objectives that school has for students.
Thirdly, ICT is practical because what is learned in ICT can be put to good cross-curricular use, this because in school, ICT can be use to enhance teaching and learning of other subjects.
Lastly, what is learned in ICT can be put to good out-of-school use. For example, at school pupils rarely looked at computer games and some pupils engaged more in communication activities such as mailing and texting and others are more interested in interaction with websites and ‘gaming’ at home.
The studying of Information and Communication Technology ( Webb,2002), is not only perceived as a catalyst for change but also need a change in teaching style, in learning approaches and change in access to information. Research indicates that teachers are both threatened by change and easy adaptations to these changes as time evolves with material content of ICT subjects.
ICT being a discipline that faces a continuous change in the subject content as time evolves therefore cannot be taught and learned as other disciplines whose content and pedagogy is almost fixed. This needs different pedagogic approaches and didactic materials to be applied at each stage of teaching since content of application and exploitation software also change from one version to another. This change requires a modification of the curriculum, the teaching and learning methods to meet up with the evolution.
ICT can be seen as a rapid changing subject when focus on the use of the World Wide Web and widespread use of mailing and texting. There are also changes in the capacity and speed of machines and changes in operating systems and interfaces. The rapidly changing nature of ICT is seen as a positive feature of the subject even though schools are slow to ‘catch up’.
ICT has become within a very short time one of the basic building blocks of modern society. Many countries now regard understanding ICT and mastering the basic skills and concepts of ICT as part of the core of education, alongside reading, writing and numeracy. Therefore it is of great important to teach ICT to our secondary school students so as to have a society full of people with ICT competence and thus a greater work force.
The next chapter looks at the elaboration of a methodological guide use for teaching of information and communication technology in form one.