EFFECTIVE TEACHING OF COMPUTER-BASED IT SKILLS

This article was written to express my beliefs in how computer-based IT Skills should be taught.

Computer-based Information Technology

The world economic system is changing rapidly, and Singapore has to change from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based one. With all these in mind, the government decided to introduce the Information Technology for the educational system.

Information Technology, also known as IT, is the use of new technological advances to help in communicating and presenting ideas. While mostly associated with the computer, it is more than that. The man who is IT savvy will be able to carry across his ideas more effectively, and has a wider net of information to tap from.

With the increasing digitisation of media and information, however, the use of the computer in IT has overshadowed all the other forms. For the purpose of this article, we shall deal with the specific area of IT the MOE is most concerned with (and which seemed to be the focus of the IT initiative) – computer-based IT.

With new volumes of knowledge being released on the internet, in the news via cable and satellite, and numerous scientific journals, the nation best able to sieve through and use all the flood of information will be best poised to take advantage of the new economy. Singapore needs its people to be IT-savvy.

What then must the people acquire to be IT-savvy? Is it the ability to use the computer hardware and software? These are actually computing skills rather than IT skills. No, IT skills are more than that. Two skills came to mind here – research skill and software adaptation skill.

The internet and particularly the easy availability of digitised media (an entire set of encyclopaedias can now be stored in two CD-ROMs) has opened tremendously the amount of material for researchers to use. With such a huge information archive, the research skill enables the person the search for resources and to sieve through the morass of data to quickly extract relevant information.

The software adaptation skill is particularly necessary, with the rapid changes in software (the Microsoft Operating Systems and Office Packages changes about once in every two years!). By the time a person is trained in one type of software, it is already outdated. With the proliferation of other software and computing platforms competing with Microsoft (Lotus, Netscape, and GNU, just to give a few examples), it becomes important for a person to be able to access software for which he may not receive formal training.

What then is presently being done in our classrooms to teach these important IT skills to the children? The author has the privilege, from speaking with many of his teacher-friends, of some knowledge of what is going on in the teaching of IT in the Singapore classrooms. He will also attempt to draw from his experience in his attachments to two separate schools.

The Teaching of Computer-based IT Skills at Present

At this moment, all classes are given 2 periods each week to access the computer lab, at the ratio of one computer to two students. With the lack of facilities at this moment, this is understandable. Still, it goes without saying that frequent contact with computers is required to reach a certain level of proficiency to use IT based instruments and knowledge tools.

It is interesting to note that only one or two of the students in the classes taught by the author has a computer at home. Even then, only one of the computers is connected to the internet. And the student himself has no personal internet e-mail address!

The author himself graduated with an Electronics and Communications Diploma, after spending probably 20 hours with computers. He was still very weak in using IT then, even with the 20 hours. Today, much of his ability to work with computer hardware and software come about because of his frequent contact with IT (both in office and with his own time) during his years with the military.

If the author, an adult with 20 hours of IT training, could not say with certainty that he can use IT properly, what can be said of the children? It is little wonder then, that the students probably did not pick up much IT skills with the limited exposure they were given. There simply is not enough time given for exposure to computer hardware and software.

This is compounded by the fact that many teachers, while trained to use IT resources, are simply not trained to teach them. The classes consisted of CD-ROM based lessons (in some cases the PETS CD!), with the students simply playing around with the software, sometimes with the teacher’s guidance.

No efforts were made to teach them research skills, or computer software adaptation skills. The children may not know how to look through the CD-ROM for the one they need, or to access the internet for information. They may not know how to explore their software for various useful functions. These are the true IT skills, not the ability to teach using a CD-ROM instead of the chalkboard!

Suggested Changes and Activities for the Teaching of Computer-based IT Skills

Obviously, the most important area to deal with is the amount of computer time the students are getting. Again, the author acknowledges the difficulty with the amount of computer resource each school can have. Hopefully, with more computers allocated to the classrooms, the amount of computer time can be increased. In the meantime, perhaps all the teachers can do is to ensure that computer-related IT skills are taught properly, so that the students will not lose out when the extra computing resources are given to the school.

The author will first attempt to deal with the teaching of the software adaptation skill. The reader must realise that besides Microsoft Office 97, there is a wide variety of other software out there! Interestingly, many of them share similar features, and as such it is relatively easy to teach a general guide to their use.

The very first item of the software the children must be encouraged to explore is the Help Files. The Help Files themselves contain documentation regarding the use of the software, with sequential guides to its use. They should be taught to access these files using keywords, or the index of topics.

The children should be taught the specific portions of the menu, as to its general use. As an example, the teacher can teach the students that the “Format” menu is usually used for functions that changes how the document will look like. With this piece of information, it should be easy for a child to learn to click on the Format menu if he wants to change the document to make it show two columns.

The author advocated the learning of the specific functions of the operating system to be interspersed with the learning of the actual application software. Operating systems are notorious for constant changes, especially across platforms, and even between Graphical Display Interfaces or Command Interfaces. The students will probably have to learn by playing around with the operating system. The teacher can minimise the disruption to the computer by ensuring that the child plays around in his own account (thus limiting the extent of any accidental deletions).

Teaching the research skill is somewhat trickier. The emphasis of the educational system has been academic, understanding of a proof text. But IT is all about using information available as a vast database, so that one can be ahead of the rest in the new knowledge based economy.

In order to teach research skills, there has to firstly be a reason to do research. Just to give an idea – for an English lesson with the theme of “Into Space”, the teachers can attempt to stimulate interest in the planets of the solar system. The teacher can have the students present a folder, with write-ups and pictures, on the planets.

This project can form the basis for teaching the use of the internet as a resource for research. They may want to read up and see the pictures at the NASA web site. They may have to learn to do a Search on the internet for astronomy related web sites.

They may look up the various CD-ROMs encyclopaedias the school may have for information. One word of warning though (and this should be communicated to the students) – the author’s experience with encyclopaedias has convinced him that they are quickly outdated even by the time they rolled out of the factories. His own research on the planets of the solar system has confirmed that as well.

Having a write-up using the computer, with pictures and information from the internet embedded, could be an enriching experience in itself. The students learnt to use the different functions of two different types of software (the browser and the word processing software), and integrate their use to produce an impressive final product.

Conclusion

The author believes that the teachers must change existing concepts to teach IT properly. Indeed, “Information technology (IT) poses an enormous challenge…because its use demands considerable shifts in the pre-existing knowledge, attitudes and behaviours…” (Brent, 1995).

This is more so if the teacher is hampered by an educational system that refuses to change to the needs of the present age. Important changes will have to be made to the curriculum, perhaps even the educational system.

In order for more time to be given to IT based tasks, the educational system needs to be reformed to allow for more project based work, rather than strict examinations. Since the students are not assessed for their ability to use IT, but rather to pass examinations, teaching using the traditional methods will always be better than and preferred to the acquisition of IT skills.

There has been encouraging signs that the ministry is intending to go in this area, to have more project based work instead of classroom work. Still, it would be noteworthy to mention that unless changes occur in the weight given to the PSLE, “O” Levels, or the “A” Levels, no teacher (perhaps even the author himself) will be willing to spend time that would have been better utilised preparing the students for the all-important examinations.

References

Brent, Robinson, 1995. Teaching Teachers to Change: The Place of Change Theory in the Technology Education of Teachers