With the appropriate use of ICT tools, the traditional methods of teaching are changing and hence the learning environment also. A brief comparison of various aspects of learning in two environments; traditional and ICT enabled is given in following table.
| Traditional way of learning | Learning with ICT |
| Teacher centred | Learner centred |
| Single media | Multimedia |
| Isolated work | Collaborative |
| Information delivery by teacher | Information exchange |
| Passive learning | Active learning |
| Single sense stimulation | Multi-sensory stimulation |
| Rote | Exploratory |
In the present classroom, there is a shift in learning from being merely instruction oriented to learner centered and collaborative working experience. As a result, the role of teacher is changing and will be continuously changing from merely being an instructor who imparts knowledge to the students by lectures and uses chalk and blackboard. He is expected to encourage higher level of cognitive skills among them. Hence, in the present scenario, he has many roles to offer. You can see these as mentioned in following table:
| Role of teacher | Teacher is desired |
| Facilitator | To help the student to make judgments about the quality and validity, genuineness of the new sources and knowledge |
| Helper | To act as a middle man to help the students what they want to learn and how to proceed |
| Active co-operators | |
| Constructor | Critical independent and Open minded professional |
| Supervisor | To watch and help in troubleshooting |
| Coach | To provide initial understanding or skill to proceed |
| Guide | To show the path to proceed |
| Creator | To create an environment conducive to learning in enjoyable manner |
As the teacher is an important component of school education, he can turn the classroom from a boring to enjoyable and rich learning experience. Hence, it is very important for him to feel secure and understand that the ICT is not going to replace or eliminate a teacher; rather it is going to assist him in his professional work and provide better learning environment.
Basically, ICT has following three facets
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ICT as a tool
-
ICT as an environment.
-
ICT as a subject of study
Our main concern is first two; which emphasize the theme "ICT should be woven throughout the curriculum". For that a teacher needs long term new pedagogical skills to support curriculum, student’s achievements and learning outcomes. The third facet, Computer Science (or Informatics Practices or whatever you may call it), is like any other curricular subject e.g. Mathematics, Hindi, Sciences and Social Sciences etc. Even for learning of fundamentals of Computer Science, the ICT tools can be used in similar way as it is done in other curricular subjects.
ICT leads to new ways of learning
As mentioned earlier, in traditional classroom, students learn usually through instructions imparted by the teacher. The learning is teacher centered and the responsibility and control of learning lies totally with the teacher. Also the medium has its own limitations.With offline learning material on CDs, one can learn at his/her own pace. In this way, the learning is learner centred and enquiry based.With the Internet he learns altogether in a different way. The main difference between a Web site and traditional media is that a web site is on a computer network (or the Internet) and allows students to interact with it and, so the learning is collaborative.The role of teacher is also different as he acts as a guide or facilitator or co-learner for learning and organising the resources. He should create learning environment suitable to diverse needs of students as well as suitable to resources available at particular school. He can evaluate a variety of alternate paths and choose the one, which provides maximize learning.
Detailed resource materials for research: Learning about learning
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/techgap/learning.html
Forefront Curriculum Web Site for K-12 Educators
http://www.4forefront.com/trld.html
ICT as library/treasure of learning resources:
A few decades ago, the teachers have only one outlet for learning i.e. the library which offered limited resources and for updated material one has to wait till next version of the book which involved a lot of time. As a result, teacher is deprived of the latest information and ways leading to his creativity got more and more remote.
Presently ICT, in addition to textbooks locally available, offers a wide variety of learning resources and current research materials across the globe anywhere and anytime. He can make use of these meaningfully. It helps the teacher in his professional work. Unlike books, the materials can be updated very fast. is being updated time to time. The access of the Internet is totally democratic in the sense that there is no barriers like race, language, ability, status, discipline, distance etc. and hence learning is much beyond these boundaries. A teacher can empower him with these learning resources. A few sites are worth visiting:
Teacher resources from National Science Teachers Association
http://www.nsta.org/resources
Quality teaching resources and professional development opportunities to K-12 science teachers: The National Teachers Enhancement Network (NTEN)
http://www.scienceteacher.org/
Interactive learning experiences in science
http://explorescience.com/
Understand concept by doing activity e.g. Sriniwasa's sphere: Exercises in working with circles and pi
http://forum.swarthmore.edu/alejandre/mathfair/spheres.html
The human genome project: Step Thru Time
http://www.genome.gov/Pages/Education/Kit/main.cfm?pageid=67
Atlas and maps
http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/docs/vrc/atlas.html
Indian languages (Hindi, Samskrit, Urdu etc.) resources
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/hindilinks.html
ICT in teacher training
The teacher training and orientation programmes conducted in face- to- face interaction mode involves a lot of financial expenditure and botherations like travel etc. Properly designed self-learning modules can replace such programmes. The expenditure can be curtailed and the hassles can be reduced up to a large degree by using ICT.
ICT in management of examinations
The traditional ways of conducting examination involves a lot of well known hassles and problems like leakage of question papers, waste of time, money and manpower, huge fees charges from students, long time wait to get result and so to carry out further plan etc. apart from this urban and rural both students have to take same question paper as making separate question papers involves a lot of technical and practical problems. ICT can be used in the management of examination and above problems can be minimized.
