THE USE OF ICT IN THE LEARNING OF INTEGRATED SCIENCE AMONG STUDENT-TEACHERS

CHAPTER ONE

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Communication is the livelihood of today’s business. Electronic data communication is becoming the industry standard of transaction media and widely used in such areas as education, payment of bills, video conferencing, and group work collaboration, etc through teleeducation and tele-medicines, as already practiced in many developed countries such as South Africa, India and China, education and health can be brought to the door step of the rural and deprived urban cities in all countries in Africa. Tertiary education occupies the apex of education endeavours in Nigeria. Tertiary education is oered aer secondary education in universities, colleges of education, polytechnic, and monotechnics, among others. The goals of tertiary education as noted in the national policy on education (FRN, 2004) include the contribution to national development through high level manpower training, development and inculcation of proper values for the survival of Nigerian society and individuals development of the individual intellectual capabilities so as to understand their immediate and local environment, and provide opportunities for the acquisition of physical and intellectual skills necessary for individuals to be self-reliant and be useful member of the society. It is also meant to promote and encourage scholarship and community service forge and promote national unity, and the promotion of national and international understanding.

Information and communication technology (ICT) is defined as computer based tools used by people to work with the information and communication processing needs of an organization. It is widely acknowledged that ICTs can be used to improve the quality of teaching and learning in any tertiary institution. the prevalence and rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has transformed human society from the information technology age to the knowledge age (Galbreath, 2000). Moursund and Bielefeldts (1999) identified three major ways of using ICT for teaching and learning. These are information technology (IT) assisted learning, technology as a tool and computer and information science. Information technology (IT) assisted learning was divided into; i. Computer-assisted learning, which is the interaction between a student and a computer system designed to help the students learn to drill and practice, tutorial, simulation and virtual realities. ii. Computer assisted research implies where ICT is used as an aid to doing library and empirical research. This is enhanced through the growth of world wide web which has created virtual library that can only be accessed by the technological literate. iii. Distance learning, which is the use of telecommunication, designed to facilitate students learning through e-mail, interactive web sites and two-way audio/video teleconferencing. Information and communication technology (ICT) should be used as a pedagogically powerful tool for the construction and modeling of knowledge.

Inspite of ICT recognized potentials; their integration in teaching learning process will be dependent on teaching. Empirical findings have indicated that even teachers who have competence in the use of ICT do not integrated them in their teaching. For instance, Moursund and Bielefeld (1999) report on now teachers use of information technology indicated that; i. The technology skills of teacher education faculty were comparable to the skills of the student they teach and that ii. Most teacher educators did not model the use of technology in their teaching. Thus, lectures need to be induced not only to be competent in using ICT but also in integrating them in instruction.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The improvement in the development of ICT facilities usage has been of a great deal. It is believed that this improvement has not been felt in the area of academic. Most students around the world knows how to operate this so called ICT facilities but it contribution to learning and teaching process has not been analyzed which is why this study is been set up to investigate the use of ICT in the learning of integrated science among students teachers in College of Education, Ekiadolor-Benin City.