In the middle ages, humans have tried to discover how to change ordinary metals into gold.
They tried mixing up the different metals. These people were called alchemists, and the way they tried to change the metals into gold was called alchemy. Now that age has gone past, now we are trying to make education better.
Thanks to technological advancements, we have found a way to make education better – Information and Communication Technology in Education (ICT in education). It is the perfect alchemy between technology and education.
Given that ICT in education is now becoming a big thing, we rather know why a lot of schools take up ICT in education.
Imagine going through a boring class on physics dealing with a subject on gravity, with the students starting to yawn and sleep. As a teacher, it is really difficult to make students understand physics and gravity unless the class is engaging.
Do you think any normal classroom method will help your students imagine the most amazing theory with just your storytelling methods?
Definitely not, You will probably teach in the best possible way, but do you think your students could comprehend it?
This is where ICT in education comes up.
With technology, you can encourage the students to understand the concepts better. It is a fun way to connect with the student and also to impart knowledge. This will right away increase the engagement of the students.
Do you easily retain those random dialogues from the movies and the lyrics or even better, the tune of the songs? Do you know why could you remember those very easily?
It is simple, once you get engaged in the movie or the song, you have better retention.
Now, what ICT does to education is simple here. With the added fun element in education through ICT combining with the conventional knowledge, it engages the students and drives up their enthusiasm.
Increased enthusiasm, means the students start to take part in the class more actively. When they start to take active part in class, they will be able to comprehend the topics much better, and the visual aids, and the gamification of the subjects, will help to keep the concepts to be retained more
The one big advantage of ICT in education is that you can easily follow up on the students. Do you remember, when you teach someone something, and you do not know whether he or she has understood it?
Now imagine that you have tried gamification of the subject, in which the students have to pass through some random checkpoints. These checkpoints will be related to the subject.
Once a student crosses that point, it would mean that he or she has understood the subject till that point.
Well, with ICT in education, you will be able to know for sure whether your students have understood the subject or not.
This will help because, if in a class of twenty, it will be easy this way to monitor which student has understood the concepts and which student has not.
We all have had situations where we had certain doubts, and no resources to clear our doubts. What we usually do next would have been contacting our teachers. But what if the teacher was unavailable for the next few days? Your doubts will not be cleared, and most probably, you would have forgotten about it in the next few days.
Then, we would have faced the shock of our lives, when the question related to the doubt is asked as a compulsory question. This is a big setback for all of us.
Now imagine ICT bringing all the resources together on a platform. The next time you had a doubt, you will be easily able to access the required resources and clear your doubts very easily, without much of a hassle.
Are you a person aged between fifty and sixty? Then you would have told your kids about your adventurous tour to go to your school. Those twenty kilometers long walk with no footwear, crossing two big rivers on the way, would have been a part of your life.
If you are not aged between fifty and sixty but aged between thirty and forty, you would have probably heard these stories on how your father or mother traveled to their respective schools.
That is what can happen to you if you are living remotely in a village some twenty to thirty kilometers away from your school. Your parents would probably choose your safety as then your education.
Well, ICT in education is probably the best thing that happened in the education field, because students from remote areas, underdeveloped villages, and the lesser fortunate parts of the country can easily get access to education.
Now that we have seen some advantages of ICT in education, there are also some limitations like over-reliance on ICT for education and less opportunity to improve their handwriting.
But, overall, ICT in education is a blessing in disguise for the students, teachers, and parents as well. In terms of ICT in education, a proper platform, a proper school is very much important. Because the best school breeds the best teachers, and only the best teachers can make quality content.
Make sure you choose the right Platform which provides correct and quality content.