One thing about the changeover to teach science and maths in English in 2003 was that for the first time ICT (Information and Communications Technology) began to be used on a large scale throughout our school system as a teaching aid. Unfortunately, instead of being a teaching aid, in many cases the poor English of the teachers turned the teaching aid into the only teacher many kids got. I can speak from personal experience that as good as my science teachers were, there wasn't much they could do to add to the ICT-based teaching aids. If anything, the structure of the aids seems to have been meant to supplant teachers instead of assist them. This is really a great shame, because ICT can be a fantastic teaching aid when used correctly.
The slideshows which schools use as teaching aids presently are essentially whole lectures with some visuals included. There is not a whole lot teachers can add to the ICT-based teaching aids, especially if their English is poor. Teachers are pretty much reduced to open the slideshows and clicking "next".
Of course, teachers still have a role to play. After all, teachers should be able to tell when the pupils are not paying attention to the virtual learning, and answer any questions the students may have. If anything, the slideshows probably give more effective information than some teachers do. The problem as I notice, it is that instead of playing to the advantages of ICT, this marginalises ICT. We're just replacing human teaching with computer teaching. Teachers are now more like teaching assistants than the actual teachers.
Beside, the primary advantage of ICT is, it offers access to a lot of data and information which teachers don't know before, and of course it can present this information in compelling and interesting ways. The way we've rolled out ICT is such that our students get a voice from the computer droning at them while some pretty cartoons pop up on the screen. At best, students may get the chance to play a game or two which facilitates retention of the material — but this isn't really playing to all the advantages of ICT.
Let me give some examples on how we can use ICT effectively. Based on my own experiences, I am teaching year 4,5 and 6 English classes. In my class, I always use e-learning to help me testing pupils' understanding in some tenses or grammar. I always allowed my pupils to use 'agenda web' which contain helpful notes and excercises. Pupils are given some time to acces the internet and answer the questions online by themselves. I used the internet to locate studies proving that what I'm teaching in class can actually apply to the real world. I always tell my pupils that they could use these things up in their spare time, having the option to call up all these visual aids and supporting facts in the classroom itself is clearly invaluable to the learning experience.
There were sometimes last year when I frequently made them watch the news on Edu Tv, or called up English clips on Youtube. It was an obvious and easy way to help my pupils practice their listening, and it was a lot more natural than repeating sentences from our textbooks to one another. ICT lends itself readily to all sorts of interesting applications in the classroom.
The one thing in common here is that nobody made the instructors use particular software or stick to particular applications of ICT. So far, our approach to ICT in the classroom has been to hand out CDs to teachers, without making teachers realise how they can more broadly apply things like the internet to lessons in the classroom. Our ICT strategy has been essentially "If we give teachers CDs with slideshows on them, we're making use of ICT! It's a success!"
But for me, a truly successful programme for ICT useness in the classroom would not only allow but encourage teachers to go beyond government-supplied tools, and to use things like the internet to enhance their teaching skills. Even if all they do is use Google to search for answers to questions they don't have answers to, I think it's a lot more instructive and useful for pupils to see how to use Google to find answers than it is for them to get a simple lecture from the computer.
Right now, we're not doing anything really useful with ICT. All we're doing is pretty much what a teacher with decent English and maybe some visual aids of her own can do anyway. The true advantage of ICT lies in things which ordinarily teachers can't do: answering almost any question imaginable, and offering exciting and interesting ways in which to present those answers. A good education policy would go beyond handing out CDs to schools; it would train teachers how to include ICT as part of their lessons in the classroom.
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