A thesis in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in

ICT in Education

The use of ICT in education has started since the 1970s where a good number of studies focused on how ICT can be employed for use in education. In his study, Cable (1972) lists various ICT at the teacher's disposal and explains very simply their nature and employment. Cable (1972:13) writes that in education and training, improved efficiency can manifest itself in many ways, such as:

„increasing the quality of learning, or the degree of mastery; decreasing the time taken for learners to desired goals; increasing the capacity of
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teachers in terms of numbers of learners taught without reducing the quality of learning; and reducing costs, without affecting quality.‟
Another study by Rowntree (1974) illustrates some importance of educational technology. This has brought about the assumption that educational technology is as wide as education itself. This is true since ICT in education is concerned with the design and evaluation of curricula and learning experiences and with the problems of implementing and renovating them.
Within the span of twenty years, the use of ICT has fundamentally changed the practices and procedures of nearly all forms of activities within business and governance. Within education, ICT has begun to have a presence but the impact has not been as extensive as in other fields. Education is a very socially oriented activity and quality, education has traditionally been associated with excellent teachers having high degrees of personal contact with learners. The use of ICT in education lends itself to more student-centered learning settings and often this creates some tensions for some teachers and students. Here, it can be pointed out that the major role of educational technology is to help improve the overall efficiency of the teaching-learning process.
Based on this role, there is a growing need to explore efficiencies in terms of program delivery, especially in the opportunities for flexible delivery provided by ICT (Oliver & Short, 1997); the capacity of technology to provide support for customized educational programs to meet the needs of individual learners (Kennedy & McNaught, 1997); and the growing use of the Internet and WWW as tools for information access and communication (Oliver & Towers, 1999). Here,
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ICT is seen as a change in the delivery method in teaching and it is the means to enhance teaching and learning. Of late, teaching methodologies has also developed along with the development in ICT. Teachers, irrespective of whether they are excellent or mediocre teachers, must be provided with the notion that ICT is here to assist in their teaching and to a certain extent to enhance the effectiveness of their teaching. Apart from this, the same teachers must also be convinced with the advantages of using ICT in education and to develop a sufficient amount of confidence in using such informational technology in their teaching. In fact, they must be able to grasp the idea of ICT as the assistants at their disposal in their course of teaching.
In this regard, Percival & Ellington (1996) give a simple review of the main aspects of educational technology and explain how adopting an educational technology can help improve the effectiveness of the average teacher. They have reckoned that the use of ICT in education comes in two forms, namely for practicing teachers who want to learn something about the educational technology so they can use it in their work, or as a basic text for trainee teachers and students of education who are studying educational technology as part of their courses.

1.