In this modern era, knowing how to use ICT tools have become a necessity in our daily life. So it is very essential for each and every one of us to know how to use ICT tools. Teaching and learning through ICT has greatly transformed the learning styles of Bhutanese learners as it offers the facilities to the various type of learners to learn on their own as per their interest.ie through watching videos, listening to songs, ppt , pdf etc. I had only the basic ideas about computers which I learned in Rigzum institute for around one and half months before I joined in this college. But after joining in Paro College of Education I got the opportunity to strengthen my knowledge on ICT tools through various modules such as FIT and ICT. As we all are going to teach in future, it is must to know both the knowledge and application of the ICT tools which will be useful while teaching the concepts.
After equipping myself with some knowledge on ICT, I wonder if ICT was not integrated in teaching and learning, what would be the situation. Will educational information be able to reach to all the learners like the way it reach to us through some other means? How would have we submitted our assignments? How would have we explored the information and ideas? But now I realized, if there is no ICT, we would have solely depended on manual textbooks and took lots of time writing assignments on paper with so limited information and ideas.
Some of popular applications which we can use through ICT are Face book, we chat, gmail which I cherish the most. Through those applications, we can stay updated with latest news and trends. So we can prepare ourselves for change to fit in this twenty first technology based society. Besides the trends, my social skills have been greatly improved since from 2010 when I started using those apps. Most of all, Gmail has a greater advantage and influence over me. I find Gmail most comfortable and effective app because through this app, lots of educational activities are possible. We can send notes, maintain blogs, summit assignments, send emails to our tutors and ask guide lines and so on.
If I share what all tools that I have learned from these modules, firstly I learned how to use VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) in which all the announcements and news about the college are given. Learning about VLE was totally new to me, but it’s very easy and convenient to use VLE after taking FIT classes.VLE has a great advantage for both tutors and students. VLE is the unique facility available in universities which makes university students distinct from high school students. Through VLE, we can summit assignments, notes will uploaded there, we can do discussions in forum created etc.Secondly I got familiarized with the word “APA” which stands for American Psychological Association and also knew how to evaluate the internet resources. Not only that I learned how to use ms-word and ms excel on how to insert table, how to insert columns and rows, deleting rows and columns, merging cells, splitting cells, repeating header rows and inserting symbols and so on.
When I was high school student my knowledge on ICT was very narrow. I thought we can only type and save files for future reference. Besides we can play some games and play music. But ICT can do a lot more than these things. I have learned so much by taking computer classes and still got so much to learn from the module which we are currently taking. Few years ago, FIT classes were offered in primary schools as well and I must say that it’s really effective to offer such modules in primary schools to built strong foundation on usage of ICT tools from very young age. So that after reaching universities we can focus on advance computing rather than focusing on basics.
Lastly I would like to thank all the IT tutors for putting effort to impart the knowledge of ICT to us.
