TEACHING AND LEARNING OF ICT IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS TO DEVELOP COMPETENCE
Secondary school teaching is one of the challenging professions that need different techniques in the preparation of curriculum, content to be taught and pedagogic styles necessary to deliver lectures to the learners in order to educate them for future life. The existence of different styles of teaching enhances the student’s mastery of the subject in relation to the age and class of student, to changes in time and environment. Information and Communication Technology teaching being a new and evolving field, needs constant change of pedagogic methods to suit the ICT content, programmes and software innovations. This work which is based on the various pedagogic styles of teaching and learning of ICT to develop competence in students and teachers is divided into two parts. Part one will bring out briefly what is secondary education, the teaching and learning methods in secondary schools with those involved in ICT, didactic materials available and the difficulties encountered in teaching ICT in secondary schools in Cameroon. Part two of the work will consist of notes for text formatting, exercises and lesson plans.
Key Words: Secondary education, Pedagogy, Didactic, ICT, Competence, Evaluation and Text Formatting,
L’enseignement dans les établissements secondaires constitue l’une des professions les plus intéressantes qui nécessite différentes techniques dans la préparation des programmes scolaires, le contenu des cours et les méthodes pédagogiques nécessaires pour fournir des outils aux apprenants dans le but de les former pour l’avenir. L’existence de différentes méthodes d’enseignement accroît la maîtrise par les élèves de leurs matières par rapport à l’âge et la classe de l’élève, aux changements de temps et d’environnement. L’enseignement des TICs étant un domaine nouveau et évolutif requiert de constantes mutations des méthodes pédagogiques pour s’adapter aux innovations dans le contenu, les programmes et les logiciels de TICs. Ce travail qui est divisé en deux parties s’articule autours des différentes méthodes pédagogiques de l’enseignement et l’apprentissage des TICs pour développer des compétences au sein des élèves et des enseignants. La première partie de ce travail décrit brièvement ce qu’est l’enseignement secondaire, les méthodes d’enseignement et l’apprentissage utilisées par les TICs, les matériels didactiques disponible ainsi que les difficultés rencontrées dans l’enseignement des TICs dans les établissements secondaires camerounais. La deuxième passe en revue les fiches de préparation, le contenu des cours du traitement de texte enseigner dans les établissements secondaires et les exercices en vue de permettre aux apprenants de développer des compétences dans le traitement de texte qui pourraient les aider dans l’avenir.
Mot clés : Etablissement secondaire, Pédagogie, Didactique, TIC, Compétence, Evaluation et Traitement de Texte.
The teaching of Information and Communication Technologies is essential in secondary educational systems today. The introduction of ICT in this system as a subject and as a tool used for teaching and learning has been welcomed with a lot of enthusiasm. The idea to teach and learn ICT in our secondary educational system and use in the society should first of all identify the objective of teaching and learning ICT, such as teaching with the pedagogic objectives in mind to improve on the students’ manipulation of ICT tools and software to better life. ICT use is not only a matter of new possibilities but also brings new implications and challenges. To use these tools effectively and efficiently, teachers as well as students need visions of the technologies’ potential, opportunities to apply them, training to support and experience to use them appropriately.
Due to the innovations in education, teachers have the task to be competent to teach ICT using the necessary content that ties with the school curriculum to assist students’ understanding and manipulation. Research indicates that the teaching of ICT subjects can change the way teachers teach and that it is especially useful in supporting more student-centered approaches (Haddad,2003). On the other hand, to teach ICT effectively, the teachers need to be comfortable with the new pedagogic methods of technologies along side the rapid evolution in order to incorporate them with the teaching and learning theories. They have to truly abide to effective implantation in pedagogy by exchanging ideas with experts in technology as it continues to influence many aspects of our social and work lives. This aspect will be discussed through the various teaching and learning theories of ICT applied in school.
Text formatting as a section in Computer science programme for Form One and Five in our school curriculum has become interesting to the educational society and community as a whole due to its importance especially in the production of reports, letters and other documents. Teaching and learning being co-existed to one another in this case need to be carried out in a manner that the teachers and students can better understand the subject content. The teaching and learning of computer science has faced a lot of difficulties at the level of the teacher that is how they are trained to give lectures, infrastructures problems and assimilation of the content by the students. Many scientists have been worried about the improvement of the teaching and learning of the ICT subjects to the extent that, they try to bring out most of the general problems faced and proposed solutions which include the problem of infrastructure and materials insufficiency as one quoted, “one of the greatest challenges to the middle grade science teacher continues to be the improvement of the learning environment (Gabel, 1994)”. This problem of infrastructure and the way the subject is taught and learned is not different from that of our educational system.
The low level of creativity of our graduates from secondary schools and universities has pushed certain governments in the developing countries to introduce ICT teaching in secondary schools. What then could be the cost of this lack of competence? Is it the way our students learned or are taught. What competences do we expect from our students and teachers in secondary schools and which content and pedagogic methods can we use to address the situation. These are the points this work is going to look at.
This study will permit teachers and students to change their ways towards ICT and to assist them to know what methods teachers can use to teach ICT and students to learn ICT successfully to permit them develop specific competence.