ICTs stand for Information and communication technologies which are currently used worldwide as tools for educational purposes. These technological tools include computers, internet, radio and television. The most commonly used tools in school by teacher are computer with the help of projector to show power point, videos and pictures to students.
PowerPoint is commonly used by teachers in school to present their lesson to students. In their power point, teacher can insert pictures and videos in the PPT slides. Using pictures in the power point slides can help teacher explain the concepts, theories to students clearer and better and at the same time it can attract students’ attention e.g. showing pictures of individuals with deficiency of vitamin C or D, blood flow in the heart, transverse section of the stem or root showing xylem, phloem and cambium.
Videos presentation provides visual effects and also stimulates students’ interest which can illustrate complex or abstract concepts like movement of particles in diffusion, osmosis and active transport. During science lesson, there are tonnes of experiments that teacher cannot conduct in the laboratory due to the lack of the lab equipments or experiments are too dangerous to conduct in the laboratory. For examples, reaction of sodium with water will produce a hydrogen gas which will self ignites and produce a bright flame. By using the video of the reaction between sodium metal and water, teacher can show the reaction numerous times without putting the students at risk.
Using computers with internet in learning has great potential to develop in education at all levels. It has been widely used in the schools and colleges of developed countries. ICTs are now being used increasingly in developing countries for “e-learning” applications. Nowadays every school own at least a computer lab which allow students to use the computers during the break time and school are also equipped with wireless network which allow teacher to search for information which is needed to prepare for their lesson and students can access information required by teachers during lesson. Using computer in learning is a cheap, fast way to access a huge amount of resources that are regularly updated like students can access online Encyclopedia or Wikipedia for information, animated 3D videos, related pictures to science, e-books which are easily accessible 24/7 – allowing students to continue their work at home where teachers can upload documents like classwork, homework, notes of the lesson so that if students misses a lesson, they can find and download required documents and do the work in their own time. Teacher can distribute information and resources (notes, past year papers, important points) on CD-ROM to students which they can access themselves at home with their own time. It can be used as delivery tools between teacher and students to send e-mail, online libraries, books and students’ work. It can assist teacher in management tools for students’ assessment and record keeping of marks.
The use of ICT has made life of teachers relatively easier with the use of network (Dedyardie, August 2011). In the computer labs, science teachers can search for related activities, exercises and questions of the lesson on the internet and shared to students through network in the computer lab. Shared documents in the network like exercises and questions can be accessed by students and directly answered by them after the lesson. Their answers are then submitted to the teacher when they are done. Answers can be automatically marked and produce a total marks for the work done or teacher can print the student’s answers in a hard copy and have small discussion with the students. This method is less time consuming compared to traditional method.
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