ICT in Education/The Uses of ICTs in Education

Education policymakers and planners must first of all be clear about what educational outcomes (which is discussed above) are being targeted.These broad goals should guide the choice of technologies to be used and their modalities of use.

The potential of each technology varies according to how it is used. Haddad and Draxler identify at least five levels of technology use in education: presentation, demonstration, drill and practice, interaction, and collaboration. 

Each of the different ICTs—print, audio/video cassettes, radio and TV broadcasts, computers or the Internet—may be used for presentation and demonstration, the most basic of the five levels. Except for video technologies, drill and practice may likewise be performed using the whole range of technologies. On the other hand, networked computers and the Internet are the ICTs that enable interactive and collaborative learning best; their full potential as educational tools will remain unrealized if they are used merely for presentation or demonstration. ICTs stand for information and communication technologies and are defined, for the purposes of this primer, as a “diverse set of technological tools and resources used to communicate, and to create, disseminate, store, and manage information.”

These technologies include computers, the Internet, broadcasting technologies (radio and television), and telephony.

Radio and television have been used widely as educational tools since the 1920s and the 1950s, respectively. There are three general approaches to the use of radio and TV broadcasting in education:

• direct class teaching, where broadcast programming substitutes for teachers on a temporary basis;

• school broadcasting, where broadcast programming provides complementary teaching and learning resources not otherwise available; and

• general educational programming over community, national and international stations which provide general and informal educational opportunities.

The notable and best documented example of the direct class teaching approach is Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI).This consists of “ready-made 20-30 minute direct teaching and learning exercises to the classroom on a daily basis. The radio lessons, developed around specific learning objectives at particular levels of mathematics, science, health and languages in national curricula, are intended to improve the quality of classroom teaching and to act as a regular, structured aid to poorly trained classroom teachers in under-resourced schools.”  IRI projects have been implemented in Latin America and Africa. In Asia, IRI was first implemented in Thailand in 1980; Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal rolled out their own IRI projects in the 1990s. What differentiates IRI from most other distance education programs is that its primary objective is to raise the quality of learning—and not merely to expand educational access—and it has had much success in both formal and non-formal settings.Extensive research around the world has shown that many IRI projects have had a positive impact on learning outcomes and on educational equity. And with its economies of scale, it has proven to be a cost-effective strategy relative to other interventions.