Audit of my school’s ICT use (what we have and what we do with it):

Our school has a computer lab equipped as outlined in in my Hello activity.

There are seven desktops and two laptops which the staff can access, along with a white board, an electronic whiteboard, one multimedia projector, a scanner, printers, and associated audio devices. There is internet connectivity, but it is often unstable. Students (Grades 3-6) have net books free of cost from the government, but the first operating system- now being replaced- was clumsy to manipulate, though not impossible.

At present, we employ these mainly for document preparation (tests, memoranda, etc.), for the research and acquisition of supplementary materials for lessons as well as extracurricular activities (PowerPoint presentations, quizzes, worksheets are examples); for communication with the Ministry of Education (e.g. submission of monthly records). As such, there’s fairly wide usage of these resources.

The equipping of some students with net books is advantageous but accompanied by several drawbacks, the main ones being the somewhat stuttered approach used for their introduction a few years back, and what appears to be a high rate of attrition among these net books for whatever reasons. Despite this, the students possess this resource but there is lack of curricular integration on a wide scale. Hence, it is basically in the hands of teachers to employ these to the best advantage, and this is hindered by wide gaps in teacher training in this field.

Our usage of ICT thus far indicates that we lean heavily towards rationales #2 & 3 as they appeared in the literature and less so to # 4 & 5. If we should find it desirable to shift the seeming imbalance, there would need to be more structured moves towards ‘pupil-centric, active-engagement interactions’ with the technology.