WHAT IS ICT?

We are in a digital era. It is difficult to think of any event in our daily life that is not using Information and Communication Technology. Our schools and classrooms are no exceptions. This course is meant for introducing you with these technologies with the intension that you meaningfully integrate technology in your practices related to teaching and learning.

As an ordinary citizen as well as a teacher, you handle enormous data all the time. Data refers to facts, events, activities and transactions which have been recorded. Data is the raw material from which information is produced. Number of boys and girls in your class is a factual description of your classroom. This is an example of data related to the students in the class. In this sense, data is a description of the world. Information is making meaning from the data. Based on the data, you can conclude if girls are more in number in your class. This conclusion is information. In other words, information is processed data. Most of the decisions taken in and around the world by and large are based on the data and information. Information is the key guiding force of the world today.

For a wider use of the information, the information must be communicated to people. It is only when the information reaches the intended audience, the purpose of creation of information as well as its communication would be served .

Let us take an example. As a teacher, you are organizing a teacher parent meeting. Details of the same need to be communicated to the concerned parents. This should happen within a time frame. As you know, it is neither easy to physically reach every parent within a given time, nor desired. With the availability of technology, it is possible that a teacher now not only can reach the parents but also interact with them in real time. A simple WhatsApp group would serve this purpose. This is only an illustration to say how technology has simplified many complexities of our life. 

The tasks you as a teacher engage in during the school time and outside require  you to generate information very frequently. For example, you need to create a worksheet for a class. You designed a worksheet template. Since the worksheet is for the class use, you need multiple copies of the worksheet. You have to take printout of the worksheets. You transfer the worksheet template to your mail or carry it in a pen drive. In other words, you have stored the information either in a cloud storage service (mail cloud) or in a storage device (pen drive).

You have successfully done the worksheet activity. You would like to see how the students progressed through the activities. For this purpose, you transfer the information of student responses into a spreadsheet to analyze. You would also communicate the students’ progress to their parents through mail, before recording these developments in the students' e-portfolio. The students’ e-portfolios are digital display of students’ progress as well as your teaching.

You would have noticed that the information created, stored, processed, transmitted, displayed and shared is in digital form and through electronic media. The technologies used in these processes are Information and Communication Technologies.

Traditionally also radio, television, and print media were the widespread technologies used for communication. The digital revolution has changed the way these traditional technologies function. The analog television has become digital television. In addition to the printed newspaper we also have electronic versions. Along with traditional radio, we also have online radio. All these have started appearing in the classroom to make the learning experiences rich. 

With this example, let us try to arrive at a definition of ICT. UNESCO has defined ICT as forms of technology that are used to transmit, process, store, create, display, share or exchange information by electronic means. It includes not only traditional technologies like radio and  television, but also modern ones like cellular phones, computer and network, hardware and software, satellite systems and so on, as well as the various services and applications associated with them, such as videoconferencing.