Need and Importance of Information Technology in Education

Need
 * Education is a life long process therefore anytime anywhere access to it is the need
 * Information explosion is an ever increasing phenomena therefore there is need to get access to this information
 * Education should meet the needs of variety of learners and therefore IT is important in meeting this need
 * It is a requirement of the society that the individuals should posses technological literacy
 * We need to increase access and bring down the cost of education to meet the challenges of illiteracy and poverty-IT is the answer

Importance
 * access to variety of learning resources
 * immediacy to information
 * anytime learning
 * anywhere learning
 * collaborative learning
 * multimedia approach to education
 * authentic and up to date information
 * access to online libraries
 * teaching of different subjects made interesting
 * educational data storage
 * distance education
 * access to the source of information
 * multiple communication channels-e-mail,chat,forum,blogs,etc.
 * access to open courseware
 * better accesses to children with disabilities
 * reduces time on many routine tasks

Information Technology in Education

INTRODUCTION Information Technology in Education, effects of the continuing developments in information technology (IT) on education.

The pace of change brought about by new technologies has had a significant effect on the way people live, work, and play worldwide. New and emerging technologies challenge the traditional process of teaching and learning, and the way education is managed. Information technology, while an important area of study in its own right, is having a major impact across all curriculum areas. Easy worldwide communication provides instant access to a vast array of data, challenging assimilation and assessment skills. Rapid communication, plus increased access to IT in the home, at work, and in educational establishments, could mean that learning becomes a truly lifelong activity—an activity in which the pace of technological change forces constant evaluation of the learning process itself.

Significance of IT in education


 * Access to variety of learning resources

In the era of technology. IT aids plenty of resources to enhance the teaching skills and learning ability. With the help of IT now it is easy to provide audio visual education. The learning resources are being widens and widen. Now with this vivid and vast technique as part of the IT curriculum, learners are encouraged to regard computers as tools to be used in all aspects of their studies. In particular, they need to make use of the new multimedia technologies to communicate ideas, describe projects, and order information in their work.


 * Immediacy to information

IT has provided immediacy to education. Now in the year of computers and web networks the pace of imparting knowledge is very very fast and one can be educated anywhere at any time. New IT has often been introduced into well-established patterns of working and living without radically altering them. For example, the traditional office, with secretaries working at keyboards and notes being written on paper and manually exchanged, has remained remarkably stable, even if personal computers have replaced typewriters.


 * Any time learning

Now in the year of computers and web networks the pace of imparting knowledge is very very fast and one can be educated .One can study whenever he wills irrespective of whether it is day or night and irrespective of being in India or in US because of the boom in IT.


 * Collaborative learning

Now IT has made it easy to study as well as teach in groups or in clusters. With online we can be unite together to do the desired task. Efficient postal systems, the telephone (fixed and mobile), and various recording and playback systems based on computer technology all have a part to play in educational broadcasting in the new millennium. The Internet and its Web sites are now familiar to many children in developed countries and among educational elites elsewhere, but it remains of little significance to very many more, who lack the most basic means for subsistence.


 * Multimedia approach to education

Audio-Visual Education, planning, preparation, and use of devices and materials that involve sight, sound, or both, for educational purposes. Among the devices used are still and motion pictures, filmstrips, television, transparencies, audiotapes, records, teaching machines, computers, and videodiscs. The growth of audio-visual education has reflected developments in both technology and learning theory.

Studies in the psychology of learning suggest that the use of audio-visuals in education has several advantages. All learning is based on perception, the process by which the senses gain information from the environment. The higher processes of memory and concept formation cannot occur without prior perception. People can attend to only a limited amount of information at a time; their selection and perception of information is influenced by past experiences. Researchers have found that, other conditions being equal, more information is taken in if it is received simultaneously in two modalities (vision and hearing, for example) rather than in a single modality. Furthermore, learning is enhanced when material is organized and that organization is evident to the student.

These findings suggest the value of audio-visuals in the educational process. They can facilitate perception of the most important features, can be carefully organized, and can require the student to use more than one modality.


 * Authentic and up to date information

The information and data which are available on the net is purely correct and up to date.

Internet, a collection of computer networks that operate to common standards and enable the computers and the programs they run to communicate directly provides true and correct information.


 * Online library

Internets support thousands of different kinds of operational and experimental services one of which is online library. We can get plenty of data on this online library.

As part of the IT curriculum, learners are encouraged to regard computers as tools to be used in all aspects of their studies. In particular, they need to make use of the new multimedia technologies to communicate ideas, describe projects, and order information in their work. This requires them to select the medium best suited to conveying their message, to structure information in a hierarchical manner, and to link together information to produce a multidimensional document.


 * Distance learning

Distance Learning, method of learning at a distance rather than in a classroom. Late 20th-century communications technologies, in their most recent phases multimedia and interactive, open up new possibilities, both individual and institutional, for an unprecedented expansion of home-based learning, much of it part-time. The term distance learning was coined within the context of a continuing communications revolution, largely replacing a hitherto confusing mixed nomenclature—home study, independent study, external study, and, most common, though restricted in pedagogic means, correspondence study. The convergence of increased demand for access to educational facilities and innovative communications technology has been increasingly exploited in face of criticisms that distance learning is an inadequate substitute for learning alongside others in formal institutions. A powerful incentive has been reduced costs per student. At the same time, students studying at home themselves save on travel time and other costs.

Whatever the reasoning, distance learning widens access for students unable for whatever reason (course availability, geographical remoteness, family circumstances, individual disability) to study alongside others. At the same time, it appeals to students who prefer learning at home. In addition, it appeals to organizers of professional and business education, providing an incentive to rethink the most effective way of communicating vital information.


 * Better accesses to children with disabilities

Information technology has brought drastic changes in the life of disabled children. IT provides various software and technique to educate these poor peoples. Unless provided early with special training, people profoundly deaf from birth are incapable of learning to speak. Deafness from birth causes severe sensory deprivation, which can seriously affect a person's intellectual capacity or ability to learn. A child who sustains a hearing loss early in life may lack the language stimulation experienced by children who can hear. The critical period for neurological plasticity is up to age seven. Failure of acoustic sensory input during this period results in failure of formation of synaptic connections and, possibly, an irremediable situation for the child. A delay in learning language may cause a deaf child's academic progress to be slower than that of hearing children. The academic lag tends to be cumulative, so that a deaf adolescent may be four or more academic years behind his or her hearing peers. Deaf children who receive early language stimulation through sign language, however, generally achieve academically alongside their hearing peers.

The integration of information technology in teaching is a central matter in ensuring quality in the educational system. There are two equally important reasons for integrating information technology in teaching. Pupils must become familiar with the use of information technology, since all jobs in the society of the future will be dependent on it, and information technology must be used in teaching in order to improve its quality and make it more effective.

INTRODUCTION
The information society challenges the education system. In recent years, the speedy, effective and global communication of knowledge has created a new foundation for co-operation and teamwork, both nationally and internationally. The increasing role played by information technology in the development of society calls for an active reaction to the challenges of the information society.

Already, new and greater demands are being made as to the core qualifications of individuals, as well as to their understanding and knowledge of the consequences of the introduction of information technology for the work and organisation of a company. Companies are no longer forced to gather all their functions in one place. The knowledge-intensive functions such as development and marketing can be sited in countries where the labour market can supply highly educated employees, whilst production itself can be moved to low wage countries. The result is the efficient handling, processing, co-ordination and administration of company resources, which is decisive for the competitiveness of the company.In a society which is becoming increasingly dependent on information and the processing of knowledge, great demands are therefore made that the individual should have a solid and broad educational foundation on which to build. Educational policy in the information society must ensure that:


 * 1) IT qualifications are developed by means of their integration in all activities in the education sector and
 * 2) The individual citizen must have an active and critical attitude to developments and not passively allow technological development to set the pace.

IT educational policy must ensure:
 * Up-to-date qualifications in the information society
 * Up-to-date qualifications gained against the background of a high general level of education in the population will be decisive if Denmark is to maintain competitiveness and its share of the global labour market in the information society. IT skills and IT understanding are thus central prerequisites for the individual, both now and especially in the future.

The advantage of using information technology is that time-consuming work routines can increasingly be performed by means of this technology and time can thus be devoted instead to communicating and informing, to the processing of information and the production of knowledge.