Quality Creation in Educational Systems Based on the Information and Communication Technology. (ICT)
Seyed Ahmad Hashemi, Vice-president for education, Islamic Azad University, Lamerd Branch
Email: Hashemy.ahmad@yahoo.com
Abstract:
Rapid changes in information age has faced all organizations and human based associations like education departments with challenges such as globalization, heavy competition, lack of supplies as well as unpredictable fluctuations. So to meet the new conditions education has to reform and use more information and communication technology, as ICT plays an important role in education. Thus for changing communications technology to public culture, a detailed analysis of this important subject with a systematic attitude in education, establishment of virtual schools, cooperation and coordination in all official organizations, private sectors and legislation is required. This essays discusses how the application of ICT would lead to efficiency in education systems, equal educational opportunities for students in all levels, quantitative and qualitative progress in education, creating a research spirit among teachers and students, enrichment of self-assessment, improvement of decision making and understanding knowledge, educating experts and finally the prevention of brain drain.
Key words: Quality, technology, Information, Communication and brain drain.
Introduction
The growth of globalization has resulted in developments in teaching methods and procedures as well as expansion in information and communication technology in all the aspects of human life has resulted in enormous changes in educational departments, and if it cannot adapt with these changes it can live no longer. ICT has become a crucial part of a modern society in this short time. This technology has been a great source of change in forming, learning and teaching methods through its high power in processing, storing and transmitting information. Systematic view toward goals and cooperation of members with each other and guidance and harmony of them toward goals is the most efficient and suitable method to be applied in improving efficiency in educational systems. This essay aims at introducing the influences of ICT on education in a systematic approach.
Discussion:
The usages of ICT in education are so varied that it needs several books to be explained so as to give it the importance it deserves and to be able to draw due attention to it. As far as this essay is concerned, the usages of ICT in education have been limited to the following aspects.
The systematic view toward the information and communication technology:
Habitual Mental and psychological overview of problems are called the systematic view. The best advantage of systematic view is that we can describe all of the systems without considering nature, measure or complexity with just four Parameters of a system. These four Parameters are field, input, process and the output (Bula, 1997).
Considering this view the influences of information and communication technology on different elements and factors of educational system has been surveyed as shown below.
The Importance and application of ICT in education systems:
Today teachers transfer the information and skills to the students and use any opportunity to provide a platform for their students’ activities. Providing the students with the opportunity of selecting and extracting the content of information would result in inventions as they use their own power of imagination. New cultural theory emphasizes on the role of students in learning. (Seif, 1995). According to research the learner that thinks independently and emphasizes on the process of learning, their learning process are more successful and stable in the end. In contrast with the learners who relate their success or failure in education to the teachers or faith or external factors (Rotter, 1989). E-learning which is the result of information and communication technology application emphasizes on process-center, self leading and self examining of Learner that can be done in the following educational systems:
1. Electronic performance support system.
2. Synchronous virtual classroom.
3. Non synchronous virtual classroom.
4. Web based training.
1- Electronic performance support system: this system is used for education of user and whenever we need general information this information will be provided by this system. The priority of this system is that it provides education upon request and at the users’ convenience.
2- Synchronous virtual classroom: A person who is to teach using this system needs synchronous virtual classrooms; these classes are live educational environments in which people in different places connect each other and are educated mostly in a virtual system that requires video-conference rooms as well as a high speed internet connection.
3- Non synchronous virtual classroom; these classrooms are educational environments on the internet that people use it since the educational environment is available for all but people may not have access to high speed internet, so they need podcasts to be downloaded and used at their convenience.
4- Web based training: web is a customer based environment that uses protocol HTTP for communicating and the web based training is a kind of training that is done in such environments (Fathiyan, 2007). Information and communication technology has lots of advantages in different areas some of them are mentioned below.
The students and information and communication technology:
The students are the raw materials of training and educational organizations that are trained with the efforts, plans and serious and continuous cares of managers and the teachers and staffs and as a production of education system these students are delivered to the society. (Mirkamali, 2002).
In this regard the Assembly of Curriculum Assessment declared the skills that are needed for students of 21 century are as follows: (Jariyani, 2001).
Knowledge of information technology, creative thinking, ability of interacting with others, the ability to do team work and ability of making high quality products.
For achieving the above mentioned skills, information technology is a crucial factor because the information and communication technology is learner oriented and also it makes the educational programs easy and educational system changeable to a network from vertical and learning gets the shape of an active formation of contents. As ICT is student oriented, the students have more responsibility about their learning and the role of teachers is of supervision.
Curriculum and information and communication technology:
Today's learners want to live in a century in which their lives are rich and in line with the mainstream. They need some skills to make them capable of doing this actively; moreover the skills are to be so that the students are equipped with the knowledge to make them successful and competitive regarding their future job prospect as the job market gets more competitive day after day, so the curriculum devised for them must consider the following criteria:
• Providing the students with editing and problem solving ability.
• Providing the students with the ability to work according to the global standards.
• Enabling them to do team or group work and communicate with people from different cultures.
• The ability of recognizing that students need to be given practical knowledge with proper output. (Jariyani, 2001).
The question is: should we look at communication and information technologies as a lesson or just a tool to facilitate learning? The experts in educational sciences and technology believe in an eclectic approach that is the combination of these approaches including the technology, the educational systems as well as the standards must be combined together. The curriculums devised for each educational centre must be taught in proportion with the requirements since the technology calls for the standards. Another important point is that development of information and communication technology influences the curriculum and has some stages as follows:
( William, 2002).
• The first step is the understanding in which students gain the knowledge of information and communication technology according to the use of technology.
• The second one is using information and communication technology in daily home works and projects by students.
• The third step is combining the information and communication technology tools with the courses contents.
Teaching or learning through the ICT:
The new technology of learning can influence education in some constructive ways. The traditional methods of teaching and learning emphasize on the passivity of learners. While the new method based on the ICT is student oriented, so the styles of learning among students are different: As an example the visual style is an action in which every student chooses a specific learning method. The ICT with its specific flexibility provides the possibility of applying cooperative methods, individual methods, pictures and voice records, simulation, virtual trips, modeling, and visiting of museums.
A: Information and communication technology application in teaching: (the application of ICT in education has many benefits some of the most important ones are explained below).
• With information and communication technology a teacher will have access to the required sources.
• Coherent learning system: another aspect of information and communication technology application is in coherent learning system. Such a system is made of recipient part and reaction part for responding to the people and the management system. These systems record all the students’ responses and provide a complete report from the students’ class performance and feed backs.
• The use of Internet in accomplishment of student's projects: According to Ebadi, internet provides the students with access to their necessary sources for accomplishment of their projects and also the students are allowed to have communication with other students and teachers from other countries for getting their required information. (Ebadi, 2003).
B: Information and communication technology applications in students' learning
According to Higgins the ICT can be used by students in learning their desired courses through the following ways. (Higgins, 1999).
• Presenting information: information and communication technology provides the opportunity to the students with the ability to copy the information easily and have access to the information much faster.
• Doing the usual homework faster: like drawing graphs in mathematic teaching, if a student wants to draw a graph manually it is time consuming, but in can be done more easily, efficiently and much faster with computers.
• Achievement and application of information: achievement and application of information is one of the most important dimensions of information and communication technology application that can help the students learning. By some tools like Internet, CDs, encyclopedias in CD formats today students have access to more and rich information that was impossible before.
• Modeling and control: modeling with the computer is one of the most effective applications of information and communication technology in the classroom. When the variables are under the investigation the relation between variables can be modularized with computers.
• Inter corporation between computer and student: it means, in learning by computer between computer and a student there is a direct relation and computers act and go ahead according to the students learning. Another dimension of corporation means two people communicate and speak with each other by computer.
• Developing and bringing schools to the student's home: it means students learn the information in their home by Internet &Computer.
Research and information and communication technology:
One of the qualities of any advanced learner or teacher is the research spirit, as human beings are given the power to decide and search to find the reality, so creating such a spirit is impossible in formal classes, whereas the application of information technology construction equips the people with the required tools to be more efficient and perform multi tasks . According to Sarafpur, “information is the foundation and basic part of a research when the information and communication technology present the information easily to staff, the staff constructively go to researchers and improve the spirit of research”. (Sarafpur, 2002).
E-research improves the research spirit in the students and teachers as well. Changing the school libraries to the e-libraries and visual libraries prepares the field for getting information from inside and outside countries. Subscription of E magazine by the schools gives a suitable chance to students. So information and communication technology can improve the spirit of research in teachers and students in the following dimensions:
1. The application of information in the students will improve
2. The ability of choosing information will improve
3. The students, teachers and managers get sensitivity toward information
4. And group research forms (Soltani, 2002).
The following figure shows the cooperation between information technology and the motivation resulting in its application in improving the search spirit:
Information attack and forming of research spirit Stability and applicability of research in a spirit
Repetition spirit Sterile research spirit
As it is shown in the table there is a mutual relationship between the ICT and motivation. when the ICT is weak and the motivation of using it is also low and the repetition of former topics is high, and when the IT is strong and available and application motivation is low research spirit forms because of information attack and when the motivation of using information is high, but IT is weak the research spirit is sterilized. In the normal case IT and the strong motivation makes the research spirit in teachers and students applicable. So for the teachers and students to do research there must be both field for using information and communication technology and also necessary motivation. But in education as the information and communication technology and its motivation is weak, because the training and foundation are weak too, so it is crucial to prepare enough finance for the creation of the hardware to use ICT and by educational classes so as to increase the motivation in students and teachers.
Conclusion:
In a research carried out by Sorehasten Hollis and Kimpton in the field of ICT in modern class rooms in England, the importance of the application of technology in the improvement of teaching and learning process has been noticed. The results of this research emphasize the influence of technology in presenting new methods of educating and motivation growth in students and self confidence and also improvement of social skills and group skills. (Alison Kington and Sohris, 2002). In a research of three schools in Norway they came to this conclusion that using technology affect on the creative plans and cause improvement of learners' ability. China used communication technology in education in 1990. After publicity of education from distance in some of Chinese universities educations from distant performed and in 1995 1000 schools were under the supervision of modern education technology and education networks increases.
The following enlisted educational technologies we can improve students’ learning. (Fatahiyan & Mahdavie Noor, 2006).
Texts: (one of the most used tools in web and for presenting educational content). Documents: (Charts for example excel Software, textbook and essay in PDF format, educational slide for instance Power POINT program). Picture and voice :(using high speed current picture and vice). E-mail (for announcement of scores news and so on to learner). Messengers and chat rooms: (when some of the class member are online synchronously they transfer information by this way) moreover other technologies like Online shared application programs, video conference , simulation and data station, so we can say improvement of the students' knowledge and information, improvement in problem solving of the students, facilitating group working and persuasion for active learning are the most important applications of information and communication technology in the process of learning and teaching. ). In this part some suggestions according to the valuable experience of other countries in using information and communication technology in education are offered:
A: virtual school
Virtual school is educational unit that represents education to the learner via computer and Internet lines which is nearly like education from distance (Talaee, 2002). In these schools different courses are presented to the learner by the Internet. The students of these schools are from all over the world and they can inter-act knowledge with each other in this system. There is no need of physical teacher except those lessons that are done by teleconference that you need to be at the computer in a special time. The other lesson is presented according to the request of the student in these methods for all the factors such as manager, teacher, the students, registration, course selection election, valuation, communication with teacher and classmates and digital library has a special definition
B: smart school: it is said to a school that has both face to face and the education from the distance feature. In these schools after participation of the students in classroom the students continue their activities in class with working on virtual library, websites and the information banks and edit creating research group, do the class projects are The most important of all is that parents take apart in their learning activities. (Http://www,Telekon.smart.schol.mht.2004).
C: learning management system
This system is for assessment of learners in education and such duties like units election, registration, gathering information in learner education progress, examination and evaluation system is done by this system.
D: learning content management system
This system does the management of content and the curriculum which is going to be transferred to learner. And by this system we can modify the program and learner can request the desired content that is presented in systems.
كلام اول 
موضوع: مقالات كنفرانس هاي خارجي
نويسنده: 
تاريخ: 30 تير 1390
بازديدها: 2055
