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Section 3: Integrating ICT into teaching and learning
Introduction
In this section, you will think about how to support teachers in making effective use of ICT and how to use ICT in your own teaching.
Many governments and schools are investing in ICT. To make effective use of ICT in the classroom, teachers need to adopt active approaches to teaching.
The UNESCO ICT Competency Framework for Teachers (p. 21) states that:
The successful integration of ICT into the learning environment will depend on the ability of teachers to structure learning in new ways, to merge technology appropriately with a pedagogy, develop socially active classrooms, and encourage co-operative interaction and collaborative learning and group work. For many, this requires a different set of skills from those they currently possess.
In this section you will have the chance to consider some practical examples of how to integrate ICT into classroom teaching.
Using ICT in the classroom
Students and student teachers often have more knowledge and experience of ICT than teachers and teacher educators. Effectively embedding ICT requires learner-centred attitudes and values. The downloadable document ‘Is your teaching learner-centred?’ from section 2 will be helpful to you in this section.
If you are working through this course with colleagues, you may wish to do this next activity as a ‘Think, Pair, Share’. If you are working on your own, compare your response with our ideas.
Activity 3.1: An example of using ICT
Read the two case studies below in which ICT is used as part of a lesson. As you read each one, make notes on the positives and negatives of the teacher’s approach to technology. You may want to use these two case studies and the following questions with your own student teachers to encourage them to think about the use of technology in their own teaching.
Case Study 1
Mr Shabukali’s school has just installed digital projectors and all staff are being encouraged to use them in their classes. Mr Shabukali is not very happy about this as he is not very experienced with using technology, but decides that he will make a PowerPoint for his next English lesson. He is teaching the past simple irregular verbs, so he makes a table with two columns – one for the infinitive and one for the past tense – and copies it onto some PowerPoint slides.
In the classroom he puts on the PowerPoint and then tells his students to copy the table into their notebooks in silence. It’s quite difficult for the students at the back to see the slide, but Mr Shabukali is a very strict teacher and they are nervous about telling him so they say nothing.
While the students are copying the slides, the teacher sits at his desk looking at his laptop. He realises that he has made two mistakes on the first slide: blow/blowed and hurt/hurted. He quickly moves onto the next slide, although most of the students have not finished copying the first slide. But there’s another mistake on the second slide (ring/runged). He quickly switches off the laptop and tells the students to open their books and do the exercise on page 21.
Case Study 2
Mrs Bwalya works in the same school. She has a different approach to technology to her colleague and wants to use it to get her students talking to each other. She chooses pictures that she has found online showing the life cycle of a frog. She shows her students the pictures by connecting her phone to the projector. Mrs Bwalya puts her students in groups of four and explains that the pictures have been mixed up so that they’re in the wrong order. In their groups they have to reorganise the pictures and then write down the life cycle.
As the students are working, Mrs Bwalya moves around the classroom, helping different groups of students with any problems she can see that they are having. She is surprised to see that one of the quickest students is a very quiet boy who doesn’t often take part in class activities. When all the groups have finished, she asks his group to put the pictures into the right sequence. When the class has agreed that this is correct, she brings different students to the board to check that all the students understand and can spell the key vocabulary.
Next, note your responses to the following questions:
- How could Mr Shabukali use PowerPoint in a more learner focused way to encourage active learning?
- How does Mrs Bwalya’s approach to technology compare to the approach taken by Mr Shabukali? What are the strengths of her activity? Can you think of ways to improve it?
- Now listen to the audio file. In this you will hear a member of the course team explaining what they understood from these examples.
Transcript
Mr Shabukali uses the PowerPoint in a very restrictive way. He could ask the students to spot the errors and correct them, even turning it into a speed reading game between groups. Another way to make learning more student-centred is to leave gaps and ask students either individually, in pairs or in small groups, to complete the table. That way the PowerPoint can be used as formative assessment, checking that students understand the content being copied. It’s also important to make sure that everybody can read the screen. You can do this by moving around the room – it’s easy to enlarge text size if you find it’s too small for some of the students.
In the second example, Mrs Bwalya takes a more creative approach to using technology, involving group work and active learning. Her role is to monitor the learning and see which students have difficulties. Did you notice how her lesson moved forward from the stimulus of the technology, and she made sure the students were all aware of the key vocabulary? She could extend this by asking the learners to write a short paragraph on the lifecycle of the frog.
You can also download a copy of the transcript.
Using ICT effectively
Tablet computers are increasingly popular in classrooms. They can be loaded with interactive software and using headphones, children can use them in pairs or individually.
An example of this can be found in a project in Kenya called Elimu, where children have access to tablet computers. You will watch a video about this in the following activity.
Activity 3.2: An example of using ICT in Kenya
As you watch the following video from 0:50 to 8.20 minutes (or read a summary of it, or the explanation below), think about the following questions and note your responses in your notebook:
- What opportunities do the tablets offer for children? How can using ICT help make teaching and learning more interactive?
- What opportunities do they bring for teachers? What are the key pedagogical and classroom management skills that teachers working in this way would have to learn?
- What do you think is the most important skill for teachers?
- What could you do with the resources available to you in your institution? (Do you have a laptop? A projector? Access to a computer lab?)
The school in the Elimu video that you just watched was part of a pilot study that provided them with tablets, but activities such as group research, sharing resources for project work, collecting class data, accessing websites and taking and sharing photographs can be done with minimal digital resources. Children may move at different rates through digital learning materials such as those on the Elimu tablets, but this also creates opportunities for peer-teaching, peer support and peer-review.
Adapting TESSA OER by embedding ICT
Here you can see two examples of how TESSA OER have been adapted to include relevant technology.
| TESSA Module | Curriculum area | Activity | How ICT could be included |
| Literacy Module 2: Section 2 | Ways to collect and perform stories |
Suggested activities include listening and recalling stories from older generations; inviting visitors into school to share stories; performing stories |
Use a mobile phone to record stories, at home if students have access to a phone, or from visitors at school. Stories can then be played at school to the whole class and activities devised around the recording. Use a phone to take photos from the performance; they can then be shared through a projector or printed out and literacy activities developed around the images e.g. describing the story or the characters in it, etc. |
| Numeracy Module 2: Section 2 | Exploring symmetry | Suggested activities include collecting natural objects that have approximate symmetry; identify objects in everyday life that are symmetrical; making symmetrical masks |
Take photos a with mobile phone - send students out in groups with a digital camera or a mobile phone and see which group can collect the most examples in photos; Search for examples of masks on the internet to show examples from across the world. |
In both these examples, the ICT enhances the learning opportunities. Recordings can be replayed and used to support the analysis of a story, promoting thinking skills; looking at photographs promotes discussion; and looking at examples of masks from across the world promotes cultural awareness.
Reflection point 
What do you think of these examples? How could you use a mobile phone, a camera and a projector to enhance your teaching?
Activity 3.3: Adapting TESSA OER by embedding ICT
Bearing in mind the resources that you have available to you, choose another TESSA OER from the materials and think about how you could improve the lesson by embedding some use of ICT that is meaningful and adds value to the students’ learning.
The table ‘Integrating ICT into classroom activities’ sets out some ideas for integrating ICT into classroom activities in primary science. You could ask your student teachers to create similar tables for other subject areas.
Adapting the curriculum
In the section ‘Adapting TESSA OER by embedding ICT’ you saw how to adapt an existing resource from the TESSA materials. Embedding ICT involves looking at the curriculum and thinking about how you can use the ICT available to you in your teaching, so that it becomes an integral part of teaching and learning.
In Activity 1.3 you considered how to use the technology available to you and started to fill in a table. You will re-visit this in the next activity and make a plan to use ICT in your own teaching.
Activity 3.4: Integrating ICT in the curriculum
Go back to the table that you started to complete in Activity 1.3. Using the ideas from this section, fill in as much as you can. You can keep adding to the table as you practise using ICT and gather more experience and ideas.
Now, working with a colleague (if possible), select a topic from the curriculum that you teach and reconstruct it by adding elements of ICT to enhance the activities and make them as learner-centred as possible. Make notes in your notebook to record what you changed and why. If you can, share your ideas with other colleagues and get their feedback.
A vision for the future?
Some schools in Africa, such as the Protea Glen School in South Africa, have some very sophisticated ICT equipment – probably better than yours. It shows what the possibilities are when government and non-government organisations (NGOs) invest in more ICT. The video that you will watch in the next activity will help you to consider the potential impact that technology has on teaching and learning.
Activity 3.5: Developing an action plan
Watch the video of a teacher from Protea Glen School talking about the impact of technology on her teaching.
As you watch, think about the things you need to consider when integrating ICT into lessons. Looking at the various types of technologies available, and the vision for the future presented in the video, where do you feel that you need more support?
Think about where you could get this support from – maybe your students, or colleagues, or support staff.
Develop a personal action plan for your own development as an ICT user and share this plan with your colleagues. Encourage them to think about what support they need in integrating ICT and consider how you might help each other. You can use the template, which is available as either a Word file or PDF.
You might also find some extra resources helpful. One is the TESSA Key Resource on using new technologies and the other is ‘Leading the use of technology in your school’, a guide for School Leaders on using technology in their school. Both can be adapted and re-used.
Activity 3.6: Sharing your ideas
There is no quiz in this section, but we would like you to share your ideas about using ICT to support learning and teaching with a colleague or colleagues.
Using the box below, either:
Write a short description (up to 250 words) of an activity you have tried (or plan to try) that uses ICT to enhance learning,
Or:
Reflect on what you have learned in this section by writing a few sentences in response to the following questions:
- What has surprised you in this section? Why did it surprise you?
- What has inspired you?
- How could you use the ideas in this section to enhance your practice as a teacher educator?
- What would you like to know more about?
If possible, share your response with a colleague.
When you’ve done this, visit this page to confirm completing this part of the activity.
Moving forward
In this section you have:
- considered how ICT can contribute to active learning and teaching;
- interpreted how ICT can support national policy aspirations;
- examined the potential of ICT to enhance learning.
In the final section of this course you will focus on the potential of OER to support teachers and teacher educators in integrating ICT into their active teaching and learning.