ICT Teaching can be a comfort zone

It is simple, a teacher need not be a superwoman to be very good in teaching. But given the right solutions and technologies, she is able to deliver better.

Storyline, Voki and Online Voice Recorder make my preparation of instructional materials not just comfortable but worthwhile.

So a piece of advice, if you are a teacher, every time you encounter a very good application, be it web-based or mobile or even stand-alone and you enjoy using it, make it as an extension of your teaching. As Marshall McLuhan would say, the medium is the message. How you are able to skillfully utilize an ICT application to exhibit seamless teaching becomes the message of the whole learning experience.

ICT Teaching

ICT Teaching as a combination of practice and a way of thinking brings us to a teaching dimension that is characterized by habits, dependency and conformity. This is all true if ICT is doing all the things we want to happen. On the other hand, it leads to frustration, exhaustion and detachment when the opposite happens.

So along the way I will be introducing some nurturing experiences that may give insight one way or the other to the practice of ICT Teaching.

 

 

ICT Teaching is.. a Way of Thinking

While technology is an instrument of how to perform new ways of doing things, the nature of technology is not technological as the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (Lovitt, 1977) argued on it. He claimed that its nature is coupled by freedom in the process that reveals its nature and is able to frame a fresh way of looking at things.

Having been in the field of teaching for many years and using ICT for effective teaching, I could not disagree with Martin Heidegger. Use of ICT in teaching has revealed important statements in my humble opinion. These statements are in itself part of the nature of technology that I have recognized in my long years in the field .

First, ICT in teaching is in itself a way of thinking.

Many studies had been made claiming the effect of ICT in teaching leads to better understanding, better learning. I am aware of those studies too. But this is how I explain the statement.

ICT brings forth not only a different modality of instruction and an effective, efficient way of teaching. ICT is a practice, a way of exploring different possibilities. In teaching, ICT creates a ball game of what-ifs, expanded discerning and more so, while some actions are intended for less or unthinking, more musings and deductions actually happen.

In choosing a particular application or platform or computing instrument for example, will this choice enable the outcome that is envisioned. What techniques or strategies would complement such choice? Will such selection and its usage invent a worthwhile impact? So while many assume that there is not much thinking to do with ICT on hand, it is the opposite, more pondering and deducing to be done.

 

Second, ICT in teaching leads to a whole different mindset of teaching and delivering outcomes.

Once a selection of an ICT solution turns out to be fruitful and has a perceived worthwhile impact, it then leads now to an evolving method of teaching. One, it creates a realization that delivering outcomes with the use of ICT would produce a new set of skills and aptitudes on the part of the learners apart from what is intended. Two, this generates another dimension of teaching, that is, teaching now requires a continuous upper hand of ICT to be more meaningful and to produce both planned and unimagined, positive possibilities.

 

Third, ICT in teaching exhumes a totally different evolution of education.

Technology creates a perception of vulnerability and control that we deem it as a standard, necessary medium now in teaching. Along the way, having the upper hand, we become consumed by technology, consciously or unconsciously. It creates a mindset that teaching could not be more effective without technology and that teaching is now difficult to perform without technology.

The evident dependency of teaching on ICT is now unveiled. “ICT in teaching” or “ICT with teaching” or “ICT teaching” becomes a coupled words, a compound term or an idiom to express ICT teaching is a new way of thinking, an evolving way of teaching.

Lovitt, W. (1977). Martin Heidegger The question concerning technology and other essays. Harper and Row Publishers, New York.