There is a new curriculum derived from Indonesian Ministry of education called 2013 Curriculum. On that curriculum ICT subject are being removed for Primary and middle school. The problem came up from the curriculum and readiness of the teacher, where in that curriculum the removal was replaced by integrating it into another subject, where skills of the teacher is not yet match to the curriculum and the tools are not ready yet. For some teachers and experts on education in the area of digital era it would a step backward, because when the children born in digital era and have curiosity for it, the school removed the subject.
What do you think about it? Do students need to have ICT subject in primary and middle school or not ?
Yes Dony, we need ICT Subject for Primary and Middle school. The same case in Jordan. Even when children born on digital era and have curiosity on it, they still need to learn how to deal with these ICT from different point of view like ethical , economic dealing, and cultural dealing. I think the responsibilty of Minstry of Education comes beyond just teaching the ICT, but why we learned it and how to deal with it perfectly.
ICT usage today, is like using a PEN or PENCIL and writing on a paper....The more the students are accustomed then the pace of growth will be fast and far reached... however there are some associated de-railers to this ICT facility usage like Handwriting skills, spelling etc... which are still needed to be honed along with ICT opportunities.
@Dony,
Your question is highly relevant and I am in favour of the ICT at Primary and Middle level of education by trained teachers..
In a report to the United Kingdom government by Dennis Stevenson used the phrase or term ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in 1997 and in the revised National Curriculum for England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2000. In the past few decades, information and communication technologies have provided society with a vast array of new communication capabilities. For example, people can communicate in real-time with others in different countries using these technologies. Information and communication technologies have created a "global village," in which people can communicate with others across the world as if they were living next door. For this reason, ICT is often studied in the context of how modern communication technologies affect society.
Young people today live in a world characterised by dramatic cultural, economic, social and educational differences; individual circumstances depend largely on where a person is born and raised. However, the ICT empowerment is very low. More than 800 million adults (two-thirds of them women) still lack basic literacy skills; at the other end of the spectrum, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is skyrocketing in every walk of life.
Notwithstanding the immense diversity in living environments, ICT are playing a central role in young people’s lives and in society at large. These technologies are giving directions and meaning to the lives of young people who are struggling to improve their living conditions, and to develop their identities.
In such a situation to empower people in general and generation Y in particular, the ICT must be part of the national curricula from the primary standard.
With a vast development of ICT, not just hard skills that they have to learn also soft skills such as ethics and healthy internet usage. Real world are very scary as it is in the digital and internet era. As my experience on visiting two Singaporean elementary school, i understood that our MOE is trying to adopt their curriculum whereas grade 3 students have ICT as integrated curriculum with other subject such as science, math or English. But Singaporean are build with culture of technology within the area, they have a good system, internet bandwidth, digitally equipped with one children having their own laptop and the teachers are well prepare with skills of ICT. While in our country, the government have not settle yet on the infrastructure, system nor the teacher.
This is just my two cent and concern with the new applied curriculum in my home country.
It may be another expression of Digital Divide. I don't doubt skills of Indonesians, but on development ladder Singapore is much higher on it.
Yes prof Shafig you will be amaze with their 'digital native' things,they need the basic and ethic of ict after that they can explore more. When i teach ict subject for grade 4 about task manager,next week his parent ask me what do i teach,because his son can make his laptop load faster than before.
Prof Firoz,surely its not because of the skills. More to governance and system where the central city have most of skillful teacher on ict while other on rural or eastern part they still fight with the children who doesnt want to go to school,have no near school and more over doesnt iffen have teacher and computer lab at school.
Since the early nineties, governments have started their capacity building programs for human capacity development and in the heart of such programs are the introduction of e-government initiatives which are highly based on ICT role in the development of computer literacy first and then information literacy. Moreover, since e-government programs involve aggressive steps to inform the population with their governmental paperwork and transactions as well as declaration of government examinations online, these steps have encouraged schools to introduce early on ICT lessons plans explaining to primary and middle school the necessary skills related to ICT.
So, yes teaching ICT is a case of country governance first and developmental implementation second. Kids today are "whiz kids" very knowledgeable with any electronic device and very skillful in its use. So, these kids should be highly involved utilizing educational programs directed to focus their skills. Parallel to that, a major campaign to educate the teachers should be ongoing to assure the effectiveness of these ICT trends.
Dear Manjunatha, this is exactly what is needed a well studied strategy that takes into consideration a balanced content where children do enjoy their nature and field activities and at the same time being directed to use IT tools in the right way.
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