Role of ICT and Internet in education

Nowadays the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), especially internet in the education sector plays an important role, especially in the process of empowering the technology into the educational activities. Education sector can be the most effective sector to anticipate and eliminate the negative impact of ICT. Technology (internet) in another side can be the most effective way to increase the student’s knowledge.
Being aware of the significant role of ICT (internet) in our life, especially in the educational activities, education authorities should be wise enough in implementing the strategies to empower ICT in supporting the teaching and learning process in the classroom. ICT is not just the bloom of the educational activities, but also it will be the secondary option to improve the effective and meaningful educational process.
The main purpose of the Strategy for Information and Communication Technology Implementation in Education is to provide the prospects and trends of integrating information and communication technology (ICT) into the general educational activities.
There are some unavoidable facts in the modern education; first, the ICT has been developing very rapidly nowadays. Therefore, in order to balance it, the whole educational system should be reformed and ICT should be integrated into educational activities.
The influence of ICT, especially internet (open source tool) cannot be ignored in our student’s lives. So, the learning activities should be reoriented and reformulated, from the manual source centered to the open source ones. In this case the widely use of internet access has been an unavoidable policy that should be anticipated by schools authorities.
Internet–based information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the information flows they support have played an important role in the advancement of society. In this paper we investigate the role of Internet–based ICTs in electoral revolutions. Employing a case study approach, we examine the part played by ICTs during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2000–2004). Roles and activities of the dissenters, as well as their associates, the incumbent authorities and their allies are analyzed with regard to Internet–based technologies during the electoral revolution in Ukraine. The case of the Orange Revolution is particularly salient, as even though only one to two percent of the Ukrainian population had access to the Internet, this was sufficient to mobilize the citizens towards an eventually successful revolution. This paper lays the groundwork for further investigations into use of ICTs by political dissenters.
The central finding of this study is that ICT rarely acts as a catalyst by itself for schooling change, yet can be a powerful lever for realizing planned educational innovations.
The term innovation is used in this study as a general designation for substantive, positive change in a school system. The real practical examples of innovative approaches were chosen for the purposes of this research only if they involved the whole school, not only limited number of teachers or one subject. Schools are considered as ideal learning organizations if they can improve themselves, learn from their mistakes, and embody in their own structure and their services new knowledge that they acquire. For this to occur, leadership, usually by the principal, must foster collaboration so that teachers are as concerned with the progress of other teachers and the school as an organization as they are with their own success.
For the purpose of describing the progress of introducing the innovations to schools, the study suggests use the model of Mandinach and Cline (1994). It includes four stages of diffusion: survival,mastery, impact, and innovation. In the survival stage, teachers struggle to learn the technology, operating mostly by trial and error while maintaining the status quo in their classrooms. As technical competence increases, the mastery stage is reached in which new forms of interactions are developed, along with better coping strategies, sounder curriculum models, and less reliance on systems experts. In the impact stage, the classroom becomes more learner-centered, technology becomes infused in learning activities, and use of systems applications becomes more varied. Finally (for some teachers) the innovation stage is reached, wherein the teacher restructures the curriculum and learning activities, moving beyond the mandated procedures and content. [p. 23]
This study contains more very inspiring ideas. Some of the most interesting are cited in the following selection:
The UK Laptop Project evaluation put forth the idea of a critical mass of ICT required within a school before ICT can catch on with the staff (Harrison, 1998). This idea is also reiterated in CA02 - Mountain View (case study), which speaks of a critical mass of practitioners to create a culture of innovation. There is no clear definition of what a critical mass might be for any desired level of ICT involvement but suggest that it would be defined by types of usage rather than by simple counts, ratios, and percentages (student/computer ratio, number of classrooms connected to the Internet, etc.). [p. 24]
If the mere application of ICT within a school generally led to more student centered teaching, then countries that desired changes in that direction could focus resources solely on bringing a strong ICT infrastructure into schools and assuring that teachers used it in their teaching. The opposite finding, which is what we are reporting, leads to a different strategy wherein both the ICT infrastructure and the planning and professional development for pedagogical change are required to achieve more student centered teaching. [p. 14]
In the colleges, universities, and normal schools, pre-service education needs to adjust to the digital world. Graduates of the teacher education programs should not only be comfortable with ICT applications but also should understand the importance of innovation and of change. Today's technology probably will not be tomorrow's technology. Knowing how to use a specific search engine is not as important as understanding the problems in organizing and retrieving information from systems like the World Wide Web. The European Computer Driver's License may represent ICT competency for today but for tomorrow more advanced understanding will be required. [p. 38-39]
If ICT skills are required for survival in the world of today and tomorrow, then they should be taught in the curriculum and tested at appropriate intervals. Teachers in many countries are currently receiving conflicting messages on ICT. National and local interests want ICT skills taught but at the same time nothing is changed in the national curriculum and in the national examinations to accommodate these abilities. [p. 38]