My schooling and use of technology concerning ICT intergration barries in South Africa.

In my understanding, the ICT integration barriers are the causes for the failure to integrate ICT in the South African education system which is usually caused by various reasons, such as incompetency of educators in schools more especially in the public schools. South Africa`s development in education seems to be taking part very slowly due to l ake of resources that can support ICT in schools.

Being suggested by Ertmer (1999) that ICT barriers can be categorised by extrinsic and intrinsic orders. By the extrinsic barriers to the teacher, such as the schools` property, lack of reliable resources has a link to my schooling experiences as I attended a school with no enough ICT related resources for teaching but only had few for management purposes at school and preparing lessons. This means that the lake of ICT integration in my school should have been caused by lacking of enough resources or it can happen that it was because of the intrinsic barriers, such as beliefs in teaching and learning or incompetency of teachers as said by Ertmer (1999). This is because we had computers at school by there were not that much and I had never seen any learner at school engaged with them for any purpose.

In my conclusion I will say that teacher and learning that is practiced primarily on textbooks and direct teaching is not that enough for learners In order to perform at their best because some of the content knowledge cannot grasp content in this method of teaching only, learners need to use the internet and access information at any and not be limited to such times. The ICT would have helped me achieve more than what I achieved, because now I have access to internet and I can get knowledge at any time and even the times that I’m in the mood for studying than waiting for someone to lecture me. 

“My final school year at Guduza Secondary School, Mpumalanga province”

 My final school year at Guduza Secondary chool in Mpumalanga province.

this is the location of guduza secondary school

I completed my metric in 2013 at Guduza secondary school, which is situated in South Africa in the City of Mpumalanga Nelspruit, Address: 418 Mashonani Trust, Kabokweni 1245, around a small town called Ngodini. The school is in a place called Mashonamini which is an underdeveloped residence were most of the learners face hard times reaching school during rainy season because of a stream that gets flooded, which I was affected too then we had to go around the road. Although we had this problem this school accommodates more learners from the around local areas such as newskom, Zwelisha, Clau-clau which is residing place and other places.

COMMUNITY VIEW 

My metric subject are SiSwati Home Language, English First additional Language, Mathematical Literacy, Life Orientation, Life Sciences, Geography and Agricultural sciences. Even though the school is situated in an underdeveloped community without libraries for learners to study most learners manage to pass and get high scores as I passed just by relying on textbooks and teachers. In my school teaches used printers to give us notes and no teaching was done by using computers and internet all we could do was to listen to the teacher when she or he was presenting a lesson and used text books which were not enough for all learners and some of us had to share the textbooks.

In my matric year I enjoyed myself and made friends and studied hard to get my certificate, which is all thanks to the good teachers I had. although my school is situated in a developing community, we were not affected by substance abuse and many learners focused on their studies which led the school having a pass rate  in the following: Admission to Diploma 21, Admission to Higher Certificate 24, Admission to Bachelor Degree 22, Pass NS 0, Pass Endorsed LSEN NS 0. I also think that we should have done better than this, if we had enough libraries and access to the internet in our community.

   

This is my comment on the TEC blog post entitled “Learning Theories in a Digital Era”. As a student teacher, I think that changes in the education system have a huge impact on teaching and learning with advantages and disadvantages to some part of our country. one of the disadvantages can be that, due to the underdevelopment in South Africa which affects many black South African`s public schools; where teaching does not take place effectively because of poor infrastructure, lack of services and incompetent teachers. It becomes hard for teachers that fail in teaching basic skills such as reading and writing which learners need to interact with ICT to adapt to the newly introduced education system and integration of learning theories. Also the lack of services in South African schools makes it a big challenge to use ICT in our education system. The advantages for a change in the education helps in modernising of our education system and gives learners education that will make them competent with today`s changing life.

Some school have already started using electronic divices for teaching.

Apart from which method of teaching is used in different schools, it is best that educators find a way to evolve themselves to be competent and effective. These can be done by finding a way to teach best by using different teaching methods. Teachers should critical analyse the environment in which their leaners live in and use the learning theories as a tool to unlock the learners` potential. This system should also be introduced in elementary schools so that learners can acquire computer skills at an early age.  Even though there are many learning theories that directs and guides teachers on how to approach teaching, it is not possible that a teacher may master all the learning theories, so teachers should find the one that will be more effective for their teaching as different theories focuses on different learning domains as some may have impact on cognitive development or other domains. The use of ICT can also take place even when there are no expansive facilities, by this my point is that even though some schools do not have campus and projectors they can also take advantage of the use of watts app witch most are using to communicate when having problems with assessments or home works and this will help the learners and teachers to get use in this communication system.

As a student at TEC Siyabuswa campus I would prefer the constructivism theory to my teaching because it touches various development areas such social, cognitive and it involves experiential learning. In conclusion, it is necessary for all teachers and student teachers to commit themselves to develop computer skills to be competent with the newly introduced education system.

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