TE year1sourcebook/Topics of Study in the Unit

The topics of study in Unit 1 are

Understanding ICT – a brief history

Through the course of history, there have been discoveries and inventions that have changed social processes and structures greatly. The agricultural revolution and industrial revolution created the agrarian and industrial societies respectively. We are now in another such age, brought on by Information Communication Technologies (ICT). With information creation, access, processing and sharing becoming quicker and simpler, society is now being shaped these processes, so much so that, the term Information Society is used to describe society today. Participating in this society requires the development of new skills as well as an understanding of how these processes are affecting society. It is the responsibility of the education system to respond to this by helping students develop an understanding of ICT, its impact on society and the possibilities for learning through ICT. The education system also has to support the building of skills in students that will make them capable of functioning in, and be responsive to a society shaped by ICT.

Most of you student teachers must be using a cell phone to communicate, which even ten years ago would not have been the case with most students. A cell phone is a digital information and communication device, a part of the recent ICT revolution. Yet ICTs are perhaps nearly as old as humanity itself, as human beings needed to communicate with one another, beginning with symbolic (non verbal) ways, before language was invented. Language could be seen as first 'ICT', it   enabled (oral) communication amongst human beings. Yet oral communication had the limitation of space and time, meaning that the speaker and the listener had to be in the same space and time.

Script was the next ICT, invented around 5,000 years ago, which enabled information to be held distinct from   the   communicator   and   be   made   available   beyond   the   limitation   of   space   and   time   that   oral communication   imposed.     (You   would   be   learning   more   about   the   processes   of   speaking   and   listening (comprising   oral   communication)   and   reading   and   writing   (comprising   written   communication)   in   your courses on language learning. Writing also enabled easier recording of human history and thus the invention of script was a landmark in the history of ICTs. Invention of printing technologies scaled up the 'writing' process and enabled mass production of books. The invention of radio and television created the 'mass media' in which simultaneously the same message could be transmitted to thousands of people. Each ICT invention enabled the processes of information creation, sharing, storing and communicating to be easier, quicker, more efficient (reaching more people) etc. Each invention was a significant event in the evolution of human communication processes and in the explosion in the availability of information.

ICT refers to those set of technologies that help us create information, access information, analyze information and communicate with one another. Human beings have always accessed information and communicated, but what makes these present technologies special is their digital nature.

Digital ICT

We are now perhaps in the middle of the next epochal movement in the history of ICTs, the use of digital  methods of accessing, creating, modifying sharing, storing information as well as for communication. Most of you would have been born after the beginning of the mass use of cell phones (the second generation or 2G cell phone technology was available for mass use from 1991), towards the end of the first millennium, while many teacher educators would have been born before this period!

This phenomenon creates an interesting inversion in the school environment, in almost all other areas, the teacher (teacher­ educator) is more familiar than the learner (student­ teacher), while in case of ICTs (more specifically in the skill of using ICT devices and methods), it can often be the opposite! Research also

suggests that younger people are quicker to pick up a technology than older people. Hence this course may require the student­ teacher to help the teacher educators to acquire some of the skills covered and support 'collaborative   learning   amongst   student­ teachers   and   teacher­ educators!  On the other hand,   the   experience   and insights of teacher educators can help student teachers to develop a critical perspective towards digital ICTs, which is essential, since digital ICTs have huge potential for doing good as well as harm. One point to note is that, one technology does not replace the earlier one, rather the earlier technologies tend to continue, thus creating a richer environment of multiple ICTs.

Knowledge model / Basis	Method	Storage	Sharing	Publishing (mass sharing)	Features
Oral / Language	Oral	Human memory	Speaking - Hearing	Not possible	Requires synchronicity of space and time
Written / Script	Text	Books	Physical	Not possible	Share knowledge across space and time, but in limited manner
Print / Printing	Text	Books	Physical	Books	Explosion
Mass Media/ Radio, TV	Analogue -Audio, video	Cassettes and similar analog devices	Physical	Over broadcast media	Mass reach across space and time
Digital (ICT)	Digital methods (text / audio / video editors)	Digital storage like hard disks	Email	Websites, blogs, Wikis – 'desktop publishing'	Information spreads fast and wide1. Much easier construction and much Wider possibilities – text, audio, video