Pages

Thursday, 19 January 2017

The Importance of Practitioners Skills and Knowledge for the Effective Use of ICT

It is vital that practitioners have the skills and knowledge to use ICT effectively, that they have the correct training to boost their confidence so that they can improve their teaching styles to fit their pupils learning types.

A study conducted by Wikan and Molster (2011) in Norway found that teachers tried to use ICT within their classroom however, it wasn’t that they didn’t know how to it, it was just they failed to see the benefit of it. If teachers aren’t aware of the positive effects it can have on children, then they aren’t going to include ICT within their classroom. They should therefore be trained on the advantages that ICT can have. I found this to be the case when working in a special needs school for two weeks. In their classrooms, they had an abundance of technology that supported the children in their learning. Therefore, having a broad understanding of why technology is important is vital for the effectiveness of ICT as without it they wouldn’t be using it.  

If a teacher doesn’t have the right skills and knowledge, then ICT can’t be used to its full potential (Gil-Flores and Torres-Gordillo, 2017). They need to be well trained on how to use multiple devises and what they are capable of doing. Kale and Goh (2014) stated that for a teacher to incorporate ICT within their lesson then it needs to match their pedagogy, relating to my previous point that ICT cannot be used effectively if the teacher does not believe it can work.




References:
Gil-Flores, R. & Torres-Gordillo, J. (2017) ‘Factors that explain the use of ICT in secondary-education classrooms: The role of teacher characteristics and school infrastructure’, Computers in Human Behavior, 68, pp. 441-449.

Kale, U., & Goh, D. (2014) ‘Teaching Style, ICT Experience and Teachers' Attitudes toward Teaching with Web 2.0’, Education and Information Technologies, 19(1), pp. 41-60.


Wikan, G. & Molster, T. (2011) ‘Norwegian Secondary School Teachers and ICT’, European Journal of Teacher Education, 34(2), pp. 209-218.

1 comment:

  1. I like your post about teachers needing to believe in ICT for it to have the desired effects on pupils, however Akbiyik and Seferoglu (2012) found that even when teachers were positive about the use of ICT in classrooms, they often were not given enough time for teaching to have the impact that would be possible with the pupils being exposed to ICT for longer.
    Reference
    Akbiyik, C., and Seferoglu, S.S. (2012) ‘Instructing ICT Lessons in Primary Schools: Teachers' Opinions and Applications’, Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 12(1), pp. 417-424.

    ReplyDelete