I WISH THESE INNOVATIONS HAD COME EARLIER

Tutors who participated in the training of integration ICT in teaching have applauded the innovation as enriching. This was revealed at Bwera PTC in Kasese District by the participants during the 3 day Training from 3^rd-5^th October 2013. The participants were college Tutors, teacher at Bwera Demonstration school and supervisors. A total of 17 participants attended 7 female and 10 male including the Principal and the deputy Principal. The trainings was conducted by Rwenzori Information Centers network [RIC-NET] under the theme; “ICT ENABLED INNOVATIVE TEACHING METHODS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE”.

 ICT for Education (ICT4E) refers to use of ICT devices and tools to support teaching and learning across the curriculum. ICT is not the main focus of learning, but supports the learning process. This refers to the use of technical aspects of ICT to extend and enhance the pupil’s learning in English and other subjects. The use of ICT however, makes new activities and approaches to the teaching of English possible.

Some of the benefits of integrating ICT into teaching and learning include the following; ICT caters for Different learning Styles of learners, it enables learners to play an active role in learning, it increases the attention span of learners, it provide real-life experience, it encourages collaborative approach to learning, it improves presentation of work, as well as offering flexibility of anywhere anytime learning during the teaching learning process.

ICT innovations also involve “Digital Storytelling,” it involves combining the art of telling stories with a variety of digital multimedia, such as images, audio, and video. Digital stories bring together some mixture of digital graphics, text, recorded audio narration, video and music to present information on a specific topic. As is the case with traditional storytelling, digital stories revolve around a chosen theme and often contain a particular viewpoint.

Mr. Kule Yofesi one of the participants in the training learnt that “the potential for integrating speaking and listening, reading and writing can be enhanced by use of interactive multimedia resources”…. “Most importantly, ICT will help us engage pupils to work actively on language both when reading and writing since there is the potential to highlight the way in which meaning is constructed”.

After the training the Principal Mr. Okello Patrick Ginyakol hailed the Tutors for attending this training of its kind in many decades. He thanked the training team for the good work in trying to simplify teaching learning process and pledged total support to the innovations. Him as one of those participating in the training agreed that ICT will simply his role at the college. He asked those who have acquired the knowledge to pass it over to others properly and keep applying regularly.

The Principal Mr Okello Patrick 5th left with the Tutors after the training at Bwera PTC. on the Right is the Deputy Principal Ms Migando Oliver

Apart from the Package that facilitates Teaching-learning process, the participants were also introduced to the social media like Twitter, Skype to help them in interaction among themselves and the community. Skype can easily help in document transfer and making online meeting.