Paper Example on Shifting Education Landscape: Homeschooling, Open Courses, and YouTube

Introduction

The structure of education is changing especially in South Africa with an aim geared towards rendering the best value. In South Africa for instance, people are shifting to homeschooling their children which worsens the gap between the rich and poor. Also, people are now getting open courses globally with multiple learners registered simultaneously at a minimal cost. Besides, school learners, as well as undergraduate students, are valuing more the content gained on YouTube and other sites when compared to what is acquired from classes or lectures. As such, the choices accessible to learners are evolving and growing the groups of stakeholders involved. It will be the apparent value of various options of education that will increasingly establish the choices made. In addition, timely value will be of importance. Since education is a primary stage within the general value chain developing and delivering fresh knowledge research can be quicker, the publication can be instant and learning can be led by learners through the integration of ICT in education.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

Education and ICT context in South Africa

South Africa has accomplished noteworthy progress in educational attainment when compared to different emerging countries. However, the education sector faces various challenges in improving the quality of basic education. Such challenges include inadequate investment in learning materials and school infrastructure especially within disadvantaged areas (Murtin2013, p.3). According to the study by Murtin, education resources ought to be increased and made equal across schools considering that a large number of disadvantaged areas still suffer from backlogs of school infrastructure, low accessibility of learning materials such as desks, computers, and textbooks. Various initiatives of ICT that also involve private companies have been suggested in different strategic documents for instance e-Education is acknowledged to be a vital feature of the modern economy that learners ought to get acquaintedwith (Murtin2013, p.13). However, regardless of such proposals, there are still huge backlogs within rural areas and disparities across provinces concerning penetration of ICT will likely persist. Wealthy provinces such as Western Cape and Gauteng exhibit outstanding coverage, however,the majority of provinces, for instance, Limpopo, KwaZulu-Natal, and Eastern Cape still lag behind.

It is important to mention that school equipment oriented towards learning is a noteworthy vital component for bolstering the outcomes of the school. In the study byMurtin, contextual variables, for instance, recurrent use of test language at home (Afrikaans or English), wealth of the family and various provincial dummies taking ignored province-specific attributes( Limpopo having a big negative and Free State with a large positive) show the biggest effect (Murtin2013, p.16). In addition, the study also indicates a big and strong correlation between policy variables and test scores, for instance, the availability of libraries at school or ICT penetration. Thus, it is recommended that the South African education sector aim at initially upgrading the basic school infrastructure prior to introducing more higher-value equipment such as ICT or libraries.

The Department of Education of South Africa embraced the role of ICT in education in 2012 by announcing its target of giving out laptops to every schoolchild before 2014. It sought to achieve this target by giving out portable mobile computer labs for schools that lacked infrastructure(South Africa Information Technology Report). The growth of the ICT sector in South Africa also grew with the growth of the demand for IT services during the period from 2012 to 2016. This period saw many projects in IT in the segments of health and education.

Models of Learning and ICT in Education

According to Meyer and Gent(2016, p.3), technology for merely the technology sake is unlikely to have a lasting effect on education. Different researchers argue that the essence of technology in education ought to be augmenting the educational process to have the anticipated impact instead of undermining or negatively affecting educational outcomes. As such, it is important to review the suitable technology role in teaching to establish a vivid objective as well as assist in directing the strategy at the macro level and procedures and implementation at the micro-level. The models below outline the role that technology ought to play in the learning process.

From the illustration of these models, it is clear that the ICT is pertinent in education as a way of augmentinglearning progression and is ideally applied in supporting a process of value creation in learning and teaching. Hence, randomly providing access to ICTs in the classroom does not essentially make a difference, and the objective of ICT as a tool that supports teaching and learning ought to be vividly defined. As an illustration, giving electronic access to class material, for instance, through tablets capable of sourcing data from a local server is equivalent to giving the student a textbook.However, when there is no teacher present to supervise the learning activity (the process of remembering facts, applying facts to develop fresh knowledge), the technological intervention would generally deliver limited outcomes. Hence, integrating technology effectively into the processes of learning and teaching entails utilizing the suitable technological tools at right places in the process oflearning progression to promote a process that develops value (remembering, comprehending, applying, reviewing, and developing) in the education of the learner.

Often ICT within education isnot approached from a standpoint of a model that supports teaching and learning. Consequently, the advancement from the ICT introduction to its effect in terms of capacity to teach and learn through ICT (as well as the ultimate effect on the performance of the learner) is not essentially vividly comprehended and managed. Besides, the majority of the goals of ICT are usually gearedtoward improving the marks of the learner. It places attention on the outcomes of the learner and deviates from reviewing the system's capacity to teach through ICTs and to assimilate ICTs to support teaching and learning. Also, ICTs integration into the process of teaching and learning is faced by obstacles in the classroom. For instance, teachers are not usually fully aware of the value of integrating ICTs and others are slower in the uptake of ICTs when compared to learners. Other concerns include teachers having various knowledge levels of ICTs and lacking confidence in applying ICTs.

According to the observation of Amory (2015,p.20), there is an information shortage of ICT-supported evaluation within South Africa. A study of assessment practices done within 400 schools in 2006 indicated that there was scarce ICT application for assessment, regardless of the fact that diverse practices of assessment, as well as extensive ICT application, was present in the schools being studied.In addition, it was observed that there was limited access to ICTs and that the access was disproportionately concentrated across quintiles and provinces. The solutions of technology ought to recognize the constraints of resources that include cost, bandwidth, as well as the local environment (inadequate security).

These ratings indicate that every aspect (except ICT in assessment) are deemed fairly important to success in ICT within education. The ratings indicate that change management, as well as curriculum content, need to be improved.

Another important aspect to consider is dealing with difference. People view technology in different ways.For instance, young people perceive mobile devices in a different way from how older people view them. A Smartphone may be viewed by a youngster as a device capable of serving different functions while an aged retiree will view it as an unnecessarily complicated telephone. Fundamentally, desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets are developed with different software and hardware technologies that impose different limitations on the system's users as well as the system developers(Bytheway2017, p.856). At a superior level, the context of the delivery of education is diverse in terms of the languages utilized, and the key stakeholders' motivations and languages consequently increasing the complexity that ought to be managed.

Way Towards Progress

The UNESCO outlines the responsibility of ICT within education as that of supporting the current 'knowledge society'. It entails establishing workforces that possess ICT skills of information handling and are creative, adept, and reflective at problem-solving to develop knowledge (UNESCO 2011,p.7 ). It should also facilitate citizens to be resourceful and knowledgeable to ensure that they manage their personal lives effectively as well as be able to live holistic and satisfying lives. It should also promote citizens to participate wholly in society and affect the decisions influencing their lives besides enabling cross-cultural understanding and peaceful conflict resolution. According to the UNESCO (2011, p.7), the aims mentioned above are the social and economic goals that ought to be the focus of an education system of a country and they depict that teachers ought to be prepared to accomplish these roles. As such, the application of technology in teaching and learning has a role that is different from enhancing the marks of the learner and has a large effect on equipping the learners for contribution within the knowledge economy. Overall, the education system capacity ought to be developed to incorporate ICTs in the backing of education.

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