ICT in U.K. Education Essay

Information and communication technologies are changing the life styles of human beings and the activities of organizations and individuals that depend on information. ICT stands for Information Communications Technology. ICT coordinates the individuals, businesses and organizations by using the digital technology. ICT is highly adopted by many government organizations it the areas like community services and educational programs. The richness of innovative technology for learning process made the system to be adopted by various government organizations in different countries by for their developmental programs. The quick development in information and communication technology (ICT) has significant changes in the way the world operates and communicates. This has an impact on educational needs, both in terms of the comfort and the delivery of educational services. Overview of ICT activities in UK Education sector According to BECTA (the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, December 2006) the ICT has made a good achievements in education of U. K. The U. K government has invested more than ? 3. 5 billion to create an infrastructure for ICT in the schools of England from the year of 1998. By adopting ICT technology, the UK schools have developed online curriculum through multimedia based teaching and learning programs. The Infra structure in U. K schools was increased to facilitate computer based teaching programs. The pupil to computer access ratio is 1:6 in primary schools and in 1:3 in secondary schools. The internet is accessed by 99% of schools in U. K. In that 97% of primary schools and 99% of secondary schools are connected to the broadband network. The U. K government has implemented single educational network to facilitate the broadband connection to every school in the country. The broadband connection is accessed by 16 million of users in education system and with the use of ICT, 350000 of U. K teachers were saving time in regular teaching administration activities. In U. K, every school has interactive white board and every day, one million primary school children are using the e-learning process in class (according to the DfES) PURPOSE OF STUDY The scope of the current study The current study focuses on the leadership and management strategies in implementing the ICT in education of U. K context. Vision towards ICT Becta has the following vision for the implementation of ICT The engaged school – ICT supports both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ learning by breaking down the barriers within the school and between the school and the community it serves. The extended school – ICT extends the School services to society by offering the facilities like health, leisure and recreation by adopting ‘open all hours’ philosophy. The expanded school – ICT learning process allows cross-organizational, collaborative models to facilitate new ways of learning. Purpose in implementing ICT Jagdish Rai analysed 3 types of purposes for the education institutes in adopting ICT 1. ICT for courses: To Acquire and absorb flexible learning & Access to web resources, CAL, Multimedia , databases that give presentation and animation 2. ICT for learning: To apply and extend productivity & analytical tools,; evaluate through computer based tests; sharing and creating knowledge through computer and video games. 3. ICT for Admin: For information handling, Student administration, course evaluation