The use of ICT is not just valuable to children; it’s good for the teachers as well. It makes their life a lot easier and easy to handle with as they can send resources to their pupils via attachments, instead of needing to carry piles of resource papers in their hands, scattering them everywhere and students might lose them. One of the ways in which teachers can do this is by VLE’s. VLE’s stand for Virtual Learning Environments, which allows teachers to set work when they miss a lesson, provide additional help for pupils via other resources, give them grades, set assessments and lots more. VLE’s are easy to use and provide teachers with great assistance when it comes to time management and organising themselves for lessons. Students also have access to their more grades quickly compared to waiting for the teacher to tell them to you.
Over the last 10 years the development of ICT within a classroom has developed in such a magnitude that no one is able to recognise the true transformation. The major transformation from the last 10 years is the change from having blackboards, then moving to whiteboards then moving into the revolutionary way of teaching employed by many schools around the UK and the world of having interactive whiteboards. Interactive whiteboards allow teacher to not just write on them but also allows them to get the students engaged with the lesson causing less boredom and allowing students to learn more instead of sitting there and just taking notes. Whiteboards also allows teachers to show useful websites, clips, education related movies etc. It also allows them to point out different pointers from a specific topic enabling students to make only key points and not just copy everything out. Another use of interactive whiteboards is that teachers can organise their work for the lesson without any hassle i.e. for instance in the past they would have to come in early and write what they were going to do in the specific lesson, this might not be possible as there might be another lesson taking place or previous students might rub it off as a joke. If they were to write down what they were going to do at the start of the less, it will waste valuable teaching time. This is where interactive whiteboards kicks into action. Teachers can prepare a class plan the day before and send it into school via e-mail and then just open it up and display it their class wasting no time and providing teachers with a peace of mind enabling them to maintain order if there is any hassle.
Schools over the years have relied on drastically on computers. Since the 2000’s many schools have been upgrading their computer systems year on year, to allow the students best resources for their learning and to cope with the ever changing world of computers. This meant that the government had to ensure students gain as much knowledge on how to use computers, so they increased the national curriculum age for ICT to be taught as a subject till GCSE’s. This has enabled students to be computer intellects when they leave school and step out into the world of work or may be even progress to do an ICT based course. The use of ICT by itself is phenomenal, but the use of ICT in other subjects has also grown tremendously. Nowadays teachers prepare graphs using different softwares enabling them to explain something with ease and quickly. Many other subjects have benefited enormously from ICT as well; Art and Graphics being one of them. Graphics in particular is very dependent on computers without them they could not create very intriguing and still perfect images. Without graphics many of the buildings we now live in will not be safe or last this long. Computers allow students and many people to create very complex structures.Teachers also have softwares which allow them to use pre created presentations to be used on the whiteboards. This allows them to save time and thus allowing them to carry on with other stuff like marking or taking courses etc. Without worrying about needing to plan for a specific lesson.
From a clerical point of view it makes their lives a lot easier as well. There are softwares out there which allow them to enter data and create online registers for teachers to use. This allows teachers to take their registers online. Teachers can also post issues with a particular student or their progress on the software as well. One example of a software which allows to do this is Simms. It allows people to create registers and also store information about students for a small cost. Some schools also have e-mail softwares which allow school letters/e-mails to be sent automatically to registered users. This allows them to save time buy just typing out the matter and just putting it on the system to be sent at a particular date/time.
Use of ICT in primary schools has also been growing. Even more surprising is that in some primary schools they have invested in tablets instead of computers allowing students access to more advanced technology. The use of ICT has been very good as people have improved using keyboards since ICT was started as a subject. The use of ICT also allows students to do homework without books and they can store their homework on data pens. Students can also access entire books on CD’s without the need of big chunky text books to carry into lessons or from home. This enables them to carry less amount of work to and from school.
ICT in balance is good for students and people but too much can have implications. There are many issues surrounding having ICT in schools. One of them is the Health and Safety issue of staring at a screen. It is suggested that looking into screens for too long causes headaches and eyesight problems which affect many students at a really young age. This affects students as they grow up causing them lack self confidence and destroying their lives.
Another big issue affecting teachers by the use of computers in writing essays and paragraphs is that students don’t focus enough on their spellings. When students type something with a wrong option auto word checker checks if the spelling is right and if it is not it provides a wide range of choices on what they are trying to write. This means that students don’t look at spellings hard enough and not enables them to learn the spelling. This is a major issue as students won’t be able to spell properly when it comes to written exams. The use of spell checkers also doesn’t allow students to look into a specific word’s meaning if they do make a mistake affecting their grammar when it comes to written exams.
The use of ICT is also ruining the art of handwriting. Handwriting is becoming a lost art with lots of students typing their essays or homework’s instead of writing them. This makes it particularly hard for them to write something without a computer. This affects the students as they won’t be able to write when it comes to written exams. Handwriting is also having major issue with exam boards; year on year handwriting is becoming considerable worse. Not writing, causes strain on hands making it difficult to write exams in long-hand difficult, which means exam boards have to spend extra money preparing computerised exam papers.
Some schools/academies are investing in tablets and iPads, instead of normal computers. Tablets and iPad technology is without a need to match. The use of iPads and tablets in education is a distraction factor for many students does not enable students to focus and attend lessons.
Another issue with using computers is viruses and instantaneous shutdowns. This means that students lose the work without being able to have a chance to save them; this gets them into trouble with teachers and in some cases they can lose their coursework and not allow them to get a good grade in the subject they are doing. Many computers are attacked by viruses every year. This is a big issue for students as it destroys their work and even though you can get a back up copy of your work you still won’t get the real document. This means that students have to regularly back up their documents in order of retrieving them if something goes unexpectedly goes wrong. These backing up means those students get frustrated and bored, because they can have better stuff to do other than sit there and back their work up.
Another big issue that not only just affects schools is plagiarism. Plagiarism means using someone else’s idea/work and portraying it as your own work. Many big universities are trying to reduce the number of plagiarists by having high tech devices to scan their work for any plagiarist information they have not mentioned in their reference. One specific software used by universities is Turnitin. Turnitin is the leading academic plagiarism technology available in the current 21st century.
Advantages
· Correction of mistakes quickly
· Quick access to information
· Professional looking work most of the time
· Easy access to marks
· High ICT illiterates
· Handwriting is a lost art
· Health and Safety issues
· Spelling and grammar is a big issue when it comes to written exams
· Plagiarism is a big issue faced by the 21st century
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