My Reflections

 One of important strategies we had was reflection. Here are some reflections I wrote.

Week 12, 18/02/2011
This is the last day of practicum. This practicum was very busy collecting data for our assignments. In ICT we had to help teachers to integrate ICT in their teaching. To me it was very interesting because it was one step in realization of my dream of integrating ICT in teaching.

We had a group of four. We were all Geography teachers. We chose Geography as our target subject. The teachers at the school we went were not using ICT in teaching Geography. They had no sound knowledge of ICT also. The school was using a TV and mobile phone to teach some topics of Science and Mathematics.The school has some toy computer for children which are used by nursery pupils. Other students do not get computer training. The school has a laptop and one desktop computer.

I was very interested with the use of a telephone and TV for ICT integration because hardly people do not consider the use of TV as part of ICT in education. Usually when we talk of ICT we refer to computers and internet. The use of telephone and TV provide greater chance for the use ICT in teaching because telephones and TV are widely spread and more people can have access to. Mostly when we talk about ICT integration people raise the issue of lack of computers and limited accessibility to internet. Also TV and phones are cheaper than computers and projectors and they can be used multipurposely. Frankly speaking this experience has gave me hope of succeeding in ICT integration.

But for our group the situation raised some headache. How can we able to integrate ICT in Geography lessons while the school has no electronic projector? We are used to use computers and projectors at school no a cellular phone with TV set. How ever we managed to down load videos from U-tube to demonstrate many topics learned in primary school Geography. We also made landforms presentation using Power Point which was accompanied with sound description.

However that was very challenging:
1. To be able to download from internet needs unlimited internet service therefore we decided to download as many video clips as possible and put them in a CD so that they can choose relevant ones and use them.
2. Almost all the videos in the internet are in English when the primary students are taught in Kiswahili. We tried to translate one video to Kiswahili language and display to the teachers.
3. Translation is not easy job. You must first write the full translation in Kiswahili and then read it several times for exercising to make sure you cope with the length of the clip. Then you record the translation and mix it with the video clips. The mixing stage is quite difficult but we used two players during display as a near solution. One of the player plays the video clip without sound and the other plays the sound. We believe we could be able to mix it in one clip but the time was not enough for us.
3. Another challenge is the low ICT knowledge of the teachers. We advice them to consult the headmaster and the ICT teacher at the school when they they need help for ICT integration.

Week 9 28/01/2011
Digital Learning Objects are very useful and can be used in teaching very effectively. They are usually interesting and rich in knowledge as often accompanied with pictures, rich explanations and illustrations. They can be used in whole class teaching and by individual; face to face or distance. They can even be watched again and again as much as the learner wants to do. How ever these objects are not always available. In our environment their use has limitations. Many of the schools have no enough computer to enable each student to have an access to those materials. Even when you think of using overhead projector you find that only a few schools can afford it. But also the question comes; how many you need for a school? One projector can not be used by the whole school.

But there is another problem; most of the websites do not allow downloads for the people outside of their country. You may suddenly stopped from downloading and told you committing a crime because the
object is only available for the citizen of UK or USA. But also I do not think that many of our teachers have enough knowledge to create learning objects convenient in our context. Web based objects may not be relevant to our context especially in Tanzania where only a few people understand English.

WEEK 7 15/12/2010
This week I came across an article in Newsweek Jan 10&17 2011 written by Carlye Adler about the prediction of Great publisher Tim O'Reilly who on the eyes of Adler is a Great Predictor because of his views of investing on eBooks earlier than any one in 1983. Tim believe that book publisher will vanish because of the wide use of eBooks.

This incidence in very important because it explains the real situation at our university. May be it is true for many universities also. Students are more and more stuck to eJournals than the books in the Library. The reason is obvious: we are married to computers; you have just to click on the Google to get thousands of document right at your desk. Why should you go to the library to spent one hour looking for a book while you can get what you need right from your desk.
This reality is also alarming to our collage to improve the library not by introducing new books only but also introducing book search software which can help the students know what books are there and if they are available or not. Otherwise our library is turning to be like a graveyards.


Week Four 12/12/2010
On their research paper on “The value of eJournals to support ePortfolio development for assessment in teacher education” Crichton and Kopp write “The documentation process …. Introduces students to authentic uses of technology to support information gathering and management as well as social networking, collaboration, and community building.” I want to insist on ‘authentic uses of technology to support information gathering and management as well as social networking’

This statement is very important because the use of technology in our country is still superficial, many of the people (including teachers) do not use technology effectively. Crichton and Kopp also explain; “When the course ended or when students graduated, the community of stakeholders, the affordances for collaboration, and the repository content would disappear”. The student teachers use the blogs during the program and once they finish studies they stop blogging. Some of them may be using social networks such as Facebook but most of the facebook users are satisfied with finding sex partners only and usually there are no meaningful discussions. There is a chance of using social networks for useful discussions to solve social problems, unfortunately this do not occur.

The measures which have been taken by the Calgary team to turn to blog instead of mere ePortfolio and giving the learners access to the University eJournal environment were genuine and very important. I think it is very important to show/teach the learner better usage of technology otherwise the money which is invested in ICT equipments will be underused or sometimes misused. Many institutions use a lot of money to put a computer in each office room but nothing different is done. Some workers may spend the whole day playing cards, listening musics or watching videos.

In my view, two factors contribute to this situation:
1. Most people do not know what really is in the internet/computers. They do not know about eDictionaries, eLibraries, Research papers, image editors, ZOTERO, eJournals, Newspapers, free eStores ............... Measures must be taken do demonstrate what opportunities are in the internet.
2. The second factor is the knowledge Most of the computer user in my context have no computer knowledge and is due to two reasons: i) language barrier, lack of language efficiency discourage many people from exploring computers/internet. and ii) is the age, one of my former school colleagues once phoned me to send him map of Zanzibar through his e-mail. He could have searched it directly from the internet. You cant believe; he has Masters degree. I think his problem is the age, when you start using computers at very late age, the possibility of mastering computer knowledge is very low. I remember one of our lecturer who was given a computer to prepare a power point for the firs time. He was wondering how can he do it, he was just clicking here and there shaking his head. Then he just went out ordering the children: Please do not touch my computer. When he returned he saw a large note on the screen: Father I can do it. It was standard four child!.

This reminds me the Papert's paper (Papert, 1996) 'Looking at Technology Through School-Colored Spectacles' which suggests that all children must be given computers.

Reflection, Week 2 26/11/2010

I have read Papert article. The article discuss very important issue – about provision of computer for kids in schools. Papert 'assumed' that when we give our kids computer they will not destroy them instead will repair the computers themselves. This idea is critical to me because I had been ICT manager at the school in which I was working before joining AKU; the big challenge I had was allowing students free access to the computers. Many teachers believed that the students will misuse the computer or destroy them. The head master used to be very angry when she saw students in the computer room at the absence of the teacher. I neither agree nor directly disagree with Papert in this issue.

I agree with him that pupils will soon become computer wizards after being exposed to them. In one instance I installed Typing program in the computers and some of the students mastered the program very quickly with great efficiency. They were able to type with out looking to the key board at a good speed. They would be able to start the program form 'a to z' with in half an hour. Six years now I have not reached even half way. At the time I am typing this I still fix my eyes to the keyboard when typing. In the same program (Mavis Beacon) when you use a computer with out speaker, the program stops some where at practicing 'j', it was students who showed me how to fix the problem. So I agree that giving the students computers, they will quickly gain wonderful talents.

On the other side, children may destroy computers because the first striking feature of the computer is the desktop back ground. Children will invade the control panel very quickly and try to change the desktop background. But because they have no enough control of the mouse and poor computer literacy; they will click some thing which may cause malfunctioning of the computer. Because of this I used to bar students from 'administrator' account. But if you do so that means the kids will never control over the computers because if you are not 'administrator' of the computer, it controls you instead. I always urge upon the control of hostel computers imposed by the college engineers although I agree that usually we students misuse them. How ever I still believe they must be free because there is no evidence that shows that it is true that the misuse of the students destroy the computers. Therefore the control of the computer only deprive the student the ability to control them. After all computers only obey legal command and do not obey illegal commands.

From my experience I think then destruction of the computer depends mainly on the kind of the program used and the genuinty of the hardware rather than the users knowledge. To provide evidence to this: in my school we had new computer with Western Digital Hard disks and others with Samsung Hard Disks Those western digital hard disks broken with in short time but the Samsung hardware are still working. The same computers the same users.

Thus we can accept the Parpet idea very reluctantly but I think he is right.