Topic outline
ICT & Policy
By the end of this unit you should be able to explain how existing and planned national policies impact classroom practices and how classroom practices correspond to and support policies related to ICT.
Learning Objectives:
- Know and understand existing and planned national policies related to ICTs in Education;
- Identify how classroom practices correspond to and support national policies;
- Demonstrate a determination to play a positive role in nation building.
4 hours
This unit is an online facilitated session. The LMS is used to distribute your unit materials, such as the various policy documents, and provide you with the overall learning pathway as well as tools to upload your assignment. All discussions, with both peers and the facilitator will be held online using the forum facility.
Introduction
Click on the video below to watch a quick introduction to Unit 08: ICT and Policy.
It is important that teachers know and understand existing and planned national policies relating to ICTs in education. Also teachers should be able to identify how classroom practices correspond to and support these national policies. In this unit we will review the Rwanda policies and see how we might implement the spirit of these documents in our teaching. Teachers must understand that lessons should not focus on the technology but rather the learning objectives identified in the curriculum. Yet they also need to find ways to support both the nations' ICT and education policies.Let us investigate how this might be done.
Policy Orientation
90 minutes
Policy is for politicians, right? ... Very false! The ICT in Education policy is for everyone involved in the nation's education. Educators, especially! So we will use this unit to investigate what the various policies say about our role in nation building.
Use your WhatsApp group to allocate each member of the group a policy document to review. The idea is you need to review only one of the documents but be ready to inform the rest of the class what the reading contains. Access the appropriate document below and familiarise yourself with the policy statements, visions, goals and objectives and prepare a summary to be shared.
ICT in Education Policy File1019.2KB
Review pages p37-40 & 58
Review p13, 16 & 19
Review p14-16, 62, 65, 79
Review p13, 15, 19, 22, 30, 31 & 54-55
Group Discussion and Sharing of Readings on Policy documents
30 minutes
- Access the forum below and select the correct thread. There is a thread per policy document. In the discussion paste in your summary developed as part of the previous activity.
- Read what others have said in both your thread and in the discussion threads set up for the other policy documents. Feel free to reply to your peers or the facilitator's postings to either expand on what has been written there or to request additional information.
- Finally start to discuss what each policy suggests you do to implement policy first at the national level (all schools) and then consider how to implement the policy in your own classroom.
Portfolio Assignment: National Policies and the Classroom
2 hours
Develop a presentation that identifies what the six policy documents suggest you do to implement them first at national level (all schools) and then how to implement them in your own classroom. Make sure you also identify what are the key issues and challenges in implementing ICT in teaching and learning?- Not sure how to use a presentation package? Access the online tutorial below to learn or revise.
GFC Learn Free Powerpoint Tutorials URL
- Create a presentation that has a structure similiar to this,
- What do the polices tell us about classroom practice?
- How would we implement the policies at a national level?
- How would we implement the policies at classroom level?
- What are the challenges of implementing the policies?
Assessment Criteria for Assignment Item #08File
Summary and Conclusion
Teachers don't always consider themselves a national priority! Many of us work in isolation and we often feel divorced from politics, ministers, the governance of the country and education ministries but hopefully now you realise how connected you are!
What you do in the classroom impacts on the learners and they in turn will shape the future state of the nation. Policies and strategy documents, of course, are focused on the future, describe ideal states and provide directives that hopefully will result in change. ICT is often seen as a tool that can transform education and in turn better prepare our learners for active participation in our society and economy. The ICT Essentials course is designed to provide you with some skills to better employ ICT in your teaching and provide tools for student learning.
Attribution
The following Open Education Resources (OER) were adapted to create this unit:- Commonwealth of Learning / Commonwealth Secretariat. (2012). Advancing Policy through Classroom Action and Technology. (CC BY SA). Available online at http://colccti.colfinder.org/sites/default/files/guyana/pages/TL/Module01/Unit02/01.html
- MoEST Kenya. (2016). Policy Understanding. (CC BY SA) Available online at http://kictcft.nba.co.za/course/view.php?id=2
- Rwanda Ministry of Economics and Finance. (2000). Vision 2020
- Rwanda Ministry of Economics and Finance. (2012). Economic & Development Poverty Reduction Strategy 2013-2018
- Rwanda Ministry of ICT. (2014). National ICT Strategy and Plan
- Rwanda Ministry of Education. (2013). Education Sector Strategy Plan
- Rwanda Ministry of Education. (2008). ICT in Education Policy
All material in this ICT Essentials for Teachers Course unit is licensed by the Ministry of Education, Rwanda under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License with the exception of the resources listed below:
Rwanda Ministry of Economics and Finance. (2000). Vision 2020
Rwanda Ministry of Economics and Finance. (2012). Economic & Development Poverty Reduction Strategy 2013-2018
Rwanda Ministry of ICT. (2014). National ICT Strategy and Plan
Rwanda Ministry of Education. (2013). Education Sector Strategy Plan
Rwanda Ministry of Education. (2016). ICT in Education PolicyAll content not licensed under a Creative Commons license is all rights reserved, and you must request permission from the copyright owner to use this material.