Amon Sa­ba Saakana

Mak­ing a ma­jor IT in­vest­ment is a lot like un­der­tak­ing ma­jor surgery. In each case, you want to be cer­tain the pro­ce­dure is nec­es­sary and even more cer­tain of a suc­cess­ful out­come. You need to be sure that an IT de­ci­sion for your busi­ness is based up­on ap­pro­pri­ate facts, es­tab­lished ob­jec­tives and clear un­der­stand­ing of rel­e­vant op­tions. And you need to know that your de­ci­sion will lead to tan­gi­ble, pos­i­tive re­sults.

In Sec­ond Opin­ion, you can send in your ques­tions for ob­jec­tive analy­sis and rec­om­men­da­tions.

Tech­nol­o­gy in the class­room

Dear TM-SO,

As an ed­u­ca­tor of 20 years, I am very con­cerned about how we are ap­proach­ing tech­nol­o­gy in ed­u­ca­tion. Stu­dents now have lap­tops, but teach­ers are un­sure about how we are sup­posed to in­cor­po­rate these tools in the learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment. I don't re­al­ly think the tech­nol­o­gy is help­ing. Some­times I feel like it's mak­ing our job more dif­fi­cult. What do you think?

Vidya R (teacher)

Vidya

Re­search is show­ing that the im­pact of tech­nol­o­gy on teach­ers' every­day prac­tice re­mains quite lim­it­ed. Some teach­ers are us­ing tech­nol­o­gy in very cre­ative­ly but, in most schools, tech­nol­o­gy use re­mains nar­row and unimag­i­na­tive. Many teach­ers are re­al­is­ing that tech­nol­o­gy alone does not help to ac­tu­al­ly achieve learn­ing ob­jec­tives. It is time for a dif­fer­ent ap­proach. Fol­low­ing are some of the key con­sid­er­a­tions:

1. Holis­tic teacher de­vel­op­ment-on­go­ing train­ing for ed­u­ca­tors must in­clude new tech­ni­cal com­pe­ten­cies as well as em­pha­sis on chang­ing glob­al and tech­ni­cal con­text. Pro­grammes must recog­nise the unique van­tage point of teach­ers in the learn­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

2. Stu­dent char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment-this must come be­fore cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence. There has to be in­creased em­pha­sis on val­ues-based ed­u­ca­tion. We are cre­at­ing the builders of our fu­ture so­ci­ety.

3. Learn­ing be­yond the class­room box-en­cour­age new forms of par­tic­i­pa­tion and tai­lor learn­ing out­comes to fac­tor the de­mo­graph­ics of the stu­dents com­ing through. More hands-on projects tied to lo­cal is­sues and lo­cal needs.

4. New so­cial part­ner­ship-the pri­vate sec­tor and civ­il so­ci­ety must be more tight­ly in­cor­po­rat­ed in the ed­u­ca­tion process. Al­so, gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy must sup­port, not hin­der, the im­ple­men­ta­tion of new learn­ing mod­els. Broad­band In­ter­net ac­cess must be com­ple­ment­ed by com­put­ing de­vices and ac­cess in­dige­nous dig­i­tal con­tent.

The in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed is for gen­er­al guid­ance and In no event shall the colum­nist or the pub­lish­er be li­able for any in­ci­den­tal, in­di­rect, con­se­quen­tial or spe­cial dam­ages of any kind, or any dam­ages what­so­ev­er, in­clud­ing, with­out lim­i­ta­tion, those re­sult­ing from loss of prof­it, loss of con­tracts, good­will, da­ta, in­for­ma­tion, in­come, ex­pect­ed sav­ings or busi­ness re­la­tion­ships, whether or not ad­vised of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of such dam­age, aris­ing out of or in con­nec­tion with the use of this col­umn.