ICT integration in classroom

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.