UNESCO ICT in Education Toolkit: Background
The world is experiencing a revolution in the dissemination of knowledge and in the enhancement of instruction, through the advancement of information and communication technologies (ICT). ICT have the potential to enhance information distribution, teaching and managing of educational services and make them affordable and available anytime and anywhere. ICT also have great potential for facilitating the fulfillment of educational objectives and for enhancing solutions to educational problems. For example, ICT can expand the reach and quality of delivery systems and empower instructors to become better teachers.
There are various forms of ICT which can be used in education. Technology should not be equated with only computers and the internet; other ICT such as radio and television can be used to enhance teaching and learning. However, forms of ICT differ in their properties, scope, and potential. For example, an audio technology captures sound; video technology depicts sound and motion; a CD provides multimedia digital content in an easily portable form; and a website can have the element of interactivity.
Education policy makers and strategists are faced with demands for more and better education. Yet the availability of financial, physical and human resources is not commensurate with these demands. A linear projection of past progress indicates that business as usual will not achieve desired targets within reasonable time. This may place some countries at risk of not developing their human capital to a threshold necessary for poverty alleviation, and for sustainable socio-economic development.
Recognizing the advantages that ICT can bring in terms of meeting demands for improved education, educational authorities are under pressure to provide every classroom (if not every student) with ICT equipment, including computers and their accessories and connectivity to the Internet.
The pressures to equip schools with ICT are coming from vendors who wish to sell the most advanced technologies, from parents who want to ensure that their children are not left behind in the technological revolution, businesses who want workers with ICT skills, and from those who see ICT as the latest hope to reform education.
Experience is proving, however, that acquiring the technologies themselves, no matter how hard and expensive, may be the easiest and cheapest step in a series of steps towards utilizing these technologies to improve. It is the integration of these technologies into education systems that is proving most difficult.
It is important to remember that technology is only a tool: no technology can fix a bad educational philosophy or compensate for bad practice. In fact, if we are going in the wrong direction, technology will get us there faster. Providing schools with hardware and software does not automatically reform teaching and improve learning. And ICT-enhanced education activities should not be perceived as a substitute for teachers or schools. Much depends on educational practices and how ICT are used to enhance them.
Effectively integrating technologies into educational systems is a complicated process. The road from the potential that ICT offers to effective application is a long and sophisticated one that requires deliberate planning, sustained implementation, calculated course modification, and continuous maintenance. This process involves a rigorous analysis of educational objectives; a realistic understanding of the potential benefits that technologies can provide; a purposeful consideration of the pre- and co-requisites for effective ICT use in education; and an awareness of prospects of this integrative process within the dynamics of educational change and reform.
Introducing ICT into the teaching-learning process is sometimes a radical change. Success necessitates meeting all the pre-requisite and co-requisite conditions for innovation and change including building constituencies, relating the innovation to the conventional, articulating the added value of ICT, assessing risks, and planning for change management.
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