[0:10]Today, let's talk about ICT in the learning environment. Is ICT boon or bane in the teaching learning? Definitely, it's more of a boon. Why? Because it promotes efficient, effective and interactive learning. Efficient because with ICT, there is so much that I can accomplish within a short period of time. For instance, the use of a PowerPoint. A teacher can do so much more than when the teacher writes everything on the board. So she is efficient all because of ICT. Effective because with ICT, learning becomes highly interactive. The learners are highly engaged in the teaching learning process. ICT is also boon because it promotes learning anywhere, anytime. Think of the flipped classroom where the students are made to work outside the classroom. Do research and do many other things with the help of ICT and come back to the classroom. Share and discuss all that they have found, also with the use of ICT. In that way, learning becomes highly interactive and effective. In ICT, learning time is certainly expanded, freeing it from the limits of the traditional school day year. ICT is also boon because it surely facilitates the development of 21st century problem-solving and critical thinking skills across a broad range of subjects of interest to students. ICT is considered boon also because with ICT, the inconspicuous details are made very conspicuous because they are magnified. With ICT, microscopic processes become perceptible to the learners. With ICT, plant growth, for instance, and bacteria life are made observable. The boundaries of time in history and space in geography are also overcome. Like I can be brought back to the time when the first man landed on the moon with ICT. I may be in UP Open University right now, but I can go to Alaska and watch the beautiful glaciers. ICT is boon because it enables the highest-quality curriculum materials to be available to any school or child anywhere. Consider university courses that are now available free on the internet for students and self-learners through open education resources. ICT is also born or blessing because ICT promotes creative thinking. It supports knowledge construction.
[3:46]With ICT, learners are made to represent their ideas, their understandings and beliefs by producing organized, multimedia knowledge bases. ICT is an intellectual partner to support learning by reflecting. Thus, ICT helps develop creative and critical thinking. It supports learners' meaning-making and is also constructing personal representations of meaning. ICT is born because it supports highly learning by doing, what I said at the very beginning, interactive teaching learning. You have seen a lot of blessings of ICT, but ICT when misused and abused, also has its own disadvantages. Thus, ICT can be considered pain at times, like when we make use of social media to do character assassination. ICT is bane when we spend most of our time in school or workplace texting, which many students do. ICT is also bane when we use, overuse, or abuse TV as a strategy to kill time. Like a teacher just letting the whole class view TV instead of her teaching. ICT becomes pain also when the learner is made to accept as gospel truth information they get from the internet and so becomes uncritical. ICT is also pain when the learner serves the internet for pornography. It's also pain when the learner has uncritical mind on images floating on TV and computers that represent modernity and progress. ICT is also pain when the TV makes the learner a mere spectator and not an active participant. It is also pain when a learner gets glued to his computer for computer-assisted instruction and so neglects the opportunity to relate to others. While we have shown several downside of ICT, there are more blessings of ICT. ICT is boon, so let's help our teachers maximize the use of ICT in teaching learning.
