It might be a defensive statement or it might be a belief
... who knows??? Whatever it is, use of ICT in schools
shld not be technology-driven ... it has to be
pedagogically motivated as well. Gd ICT equipment does
support a wider range of ICT packages, and thus provide a
greater spectrum of activities for the teachers and
students in the Economics and Business classrooms.
However, it does not imply better use of ICT packages, may
it be the Internet or spreadsheets or other CAL packages.
If we have better ICT equipment, ceteris paribus, little or
no benefits would be reaped. E.g:-
1. What's the difference b/w reading an article on the net
and in the daily newspaper?
2. What's the difference b/w didactic teaching using
powerpoint and OHP?
3. What's the difference b/w clicking the mouse to go onto
the next screen in the ICT tutorial package and turning the
page of the textbook?
Shldn't we be more concerned abt how the sch is using the
computers rather than the equipments that we have? In an
ideal world, it would be great to acquire the best possible
equipment ... but in the real world, given the limited
resources that we have, how shld we be using the computers?
I was a teacher from Singapore ... the ICT equipment in
schools there are really first class ... we've got pentium
300 situated all over the school to every one laptop for
every two teachers. But having done my research in
economics classrm in the UK, I have gonna admit that the
use of ICT packages here are more sophiscated and more
student-centred than back home ... and many of these schs
that I went into were running on 486s ... win 3.1 platforms.
Cheers,
Chirp
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Cher Ping, Lim
Graduate School of Education
University of Bristol
35 Berkeley Square
Bristol BS8 1JA
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0117) 9287029 (Office)
+44 (0) 7931143015 (Mobile)
+44 (0117) 9427162 (Home)
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