The main role of the
teacher is to make a learning more interesting and precise to the students.
Back then due to less developments and lack of facilities, most of the teachers
adopted primitive ways (corporal punishment) to make a concept retained for a
longer duration. Now gradually our country is opening up to developments and
teachers are also implementing different ways to make a lesson clearer compared
to the past days. One of the prominent strategy that the teacher use is by
integrating ICT in the classroom.
When I was in primary
school, I did not see my teachers using any ICT communicative tools in
teaching, which made us to raise our eye brows and bewildered when we were
first introduced to it. The reasons for not integrating ICT in teaching could
be, may be due to lack of facilities and one reason could be because of lack of
knowledge on how to integrate it. Regarding integration of ICT in classroom, Michael D. Williams gave a
wonderful analogy. He says that, “Integrating technology
into classroom instruction is a little like cooking a meal for important
guests; it requires a careful selection of ingredients (that is, instructional
materials), and thoughtful preparation (in this case, lesson planning). And, as
all good chefs know, after you have finished cooking, you need to present your
masterpieces (your lesson, that is) to your guests (your students) in a manner
so as to level them well-fed (having the required skills and knowledge) and
eager to come back for more.”
It is said that the
teachers who use the computers as merely electronic babysitting or as a reward
for good behavior or performance are not truly integrating the technology into
their teaching and learning activities. So, here it infers that integrating ICT
in the classroom is not merely to bring any technologies and showing what are
in it. We have to integrate in such a way that it assist teaching, make
classroom environment zealous, motivate students to learn more and most
importantly we have to make to the condition that, if we take away the
technology it would diminish the quality of the lesson.
Moreover,
while integrating ICT in teaching, we have to eradicate a sense of being
totally substituted by ICT. Teacher who integrate IT into their instruction
have important roles to play at all stages of lesson process - before the
lessons begins, during the lesson itself and after the lesson has concluded.
So, lest you think that computers will lessen the role of teachers in schools,
I would stress that the opposite is true: Teachers in integrated-technology
school will have an even greater responsibility for managing their classes and
planning effective instruction.
Therefore
to make the integration of ICT in teaching more reliable and authentic, it is
important to give more focus on it. Furthermore we should not be oblivious of
the fact that there are immense benefits of integrating ICT in teaching if used
appropriately.
