Blackboards fade out as technology takes over

A class of almost 30 students sit calmly preparing for a three-hour lesson. Many of them are busy scrolling their smartphones.

They are revising the previous lesson on the PowerPoint slides which were sent to them by their lecturer through e-mail.

Dr Kanaeli Kaale, the lecturer of the class, enters the classroom with her aide who ushers her to her table.

The aide then takes the laptop and the projector to prepare the class for the lesson.

The tall lecturer in her purple dress with stylish spectacles then sits on her chair and greets her students,

The aide then switches the laptop on and connects it to the projector.

After directing the projector’s rays onto the wall, the PowerPoint slides from the laptop begins to display .

He fits the projection on the wall to make it visible to his audince.

‘Participatory Communication Model,’ beams the slide on the wall and Dr Kaale asks her students to pay attention after her intorduction.

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the learning process has in recent years taken a new turn, thanks to the technological advancement which has led to the emergence of not only a number of devices that learners can use in the process but also with the multiple platforms that they can use learn.

While there are some platforms where one has to incur charges, some are totally free thus widen the learners’ chances to increase their knowledge on various issues.

ICT is an umbrella term that includes any communication device or application, encompassing, among others, radio, television, cell phones, computer and network hardware and software, satellite systems, as well as various services and applications associated with them, such as videoconferencing and distance learning.

ICT open up opportunities for learning because it enables learners to access, extend, transform and share ideas and information in multi-modal communication styles and format. It helps the learner to share learning resources and spaces, promote learner-centred and collaborative learning principles and enhance critical thinking, creative thinking and problem solving skills.

“PowerPoint slides are more engaging in the teaching and learning process compared to the classical tradition of using a whiteboard and a marker pen,” says Dr Kaale, a Journalism and Mass Communication lecturer at St Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT)-Dar Campus in an interview with Success after the lesson. She says that after recognizing the potential that ICTs can offer in turning her students into active learners, she uses them a lot in her lessons.

“I have a database of e-mail addresses of all students. I use the database in sending the students materials like books, journals and papers related to what I teach,” she says.

Dr Kaale also says that she makes use of the same while giving students assignments wand once they complete, they send to the lecturerer via their email.

“This is cost effective for most students since you may find that a student is supposed to write a thirty-page term paper. Writing it using the normal stationary would cost a big sum of money, but through submitting them via their emails, it’s totally free,” said the lecturer.

For Ali Omar, 26, a student of Bachelor of Science in Insurance and Risk Management at the Institute of Finance Management (IFM), ICTs has helped him acquire both general knowledge and in school.

Mr Ali says that ICTs has helped him get relevant materials on what he is learning in class.

“I get the opportunity to learn something from various scholars and practitioners across the world. I get to hear different views on the same issue something which I consider fundamental in enriching someone’s knowledge of something,” says Mr Omar.

Mr Omar says ICTs link students of a particular field with its relevant organs and companies offering the same services of what students are learning. According to him, this was hardly the case before we had this brilliant access to information, he says:

“I can today be able to know what exactly Jubilee and NHIF (Insurance Companies) are doing because I can access their annual reports through their websites and their social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter and the likes,” he says.

The capacity of ICTs in improving people’s learning process has not left behind the people from special groups, particularly, those with disabilities.

The invention of Talkback Android mobile App has enabled people with sight disability to follow closely what is going in the world of news and information and hence opening them up with new opportunity that they previously did not have.

Mr Iddi Ramadhan who is Tanzania’s Blinds Association-Dar es Salaam Zone’s Secretary says that the App has a massive potential to them since it enables them to use ‘smartphones’ and laptop. “The App helps me in managing my phone. Wherever I touch the phone’s screen, it tells me where my thumb is. If it is in the message, Facebook app or any other app in my phone,” says Mr Ramadhan in a phone interview with Success.

Mr Ramadhan says that the app enables him to follow news and current national and international affairs, have access to text messaging and visit social media accounts like Facebook and WhatsApp.

He says that before the development of the App, it was not easy because, according to him, the previously existing mobile phones were not user friendly to them .

“Those days, we had no privacy at all in the communication. If you get a text message, you had to go to someone else to read it to you. You had even to memorize the numbers of all those who are in your contacts, but now things have changed for better,” says Mr Ramadhan.

Baraka Kiranga, an independent consultant and expert in Organization Information system and ICTs strategists, says that ICTs have opened numerous platforms and forums whereby a person can learn new things on various issues.

According to him, through ICTs, people can learn, understand and educate through visiting various websites. He says he learnt how to design websites and doing ICTs strategies through YouTube tutorials, visiting Vimeo and other tutorial based websites.

“A person may come for ICTs’ consultancy, I just log in the websites in order to learn about something brought forward to me and then go back to the client to deal with the problem,” says Baraka who is also focuses on data journalism which he proudly says is another self-taught skill through the internet.

ICTs have also brought about drastic improvements to the people’s readership culture in the country especially those who are ardent books readers who previously before the invention of ICTs had to walk around with huge pack of books and documents.

One among those people is Ezekiel Sharmakala, 25, a base resident and a university graduate who is loyal book reader. Mr Sharmakala says that he owes what he calls a ‘hundred favours’ to the ICTs because of simplifying what he loves most.

“I would walk around with many books in the bag, but now I am able to carry more than ten books in my IPhone. That is a big favour thanks to the ICTs,” he says.

However, it has been identified that of all the gratifications that the ICTs can bring to people, there are challenges and limitations associated with the technologies that require the intervention of the respective authority.

Mr Kiranga, for example, is concerned with the massive information filled in the internet that he argues that people must filter what they really want from it.

“Massive information on the internet makes people unfocused at all. You find someone logged into the internet to look for particular thing only to find them minutes later doing something else they did not even intend to browse in the first place,” this is a big problem according to Mr Kiranga facing many internet users.

“It is thus necessary, if not compulsory, for internet users to be specific and focused on what they want exactly from the internet and where they retrieve those kind of information,” says the ICTs expert.

On his side, Mr Sharmakala is concerned with the amount of time people spend in the internet instead of doing other things that can be extra beneficial to them other than idling in the internet the whole day. To him, this is not proper use of technolgy.

By recognizing its importance in the learning process, Dr Kaale is urging the government to “design an ICTs based curriculum which reflects Tanzania’s environment and which will spearhead the creativity among the students in their respective level of education.”