ISSUES & CHALLENGES IN ICT APPLICATIONS

The teachers can improve their ICT skills by attending courses, get use to ICT equipments and applications and learn from the experience teachers. As we know, the requirement of teachers which experts in handling equipment or ICT application increases as the smart school interact with multimedia learning which equipped with school resource centre, computer laboratory, classroom and school access centre. Nowadays, era of information and communication technology (ICT) are increase rapidly, so it is become part and parcel in the process of teaching and learning in schools. So, to fulfill this requirement, the teacher must improve their skills in ICT by attending courses that are conduct by government. Teachers must also get used to ICT equipment and applications. Examples of ICT equipment that usually use in the classroom is LCD projector and OHP .So , the teachers must be able to set up these projector. Besides that, teachers should also know to apply the application of ICT to their students, such as word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation. In order to excel in ICT , the teachers can also learn from experience teachers. They can gain more knowledge about handling the ICT equipment and learn more on how to apply the application in ICT.

Government should plays their important roles in order to improve the ICT facilities especially for students in the rural area. First, the government should provide the IT centre. As we know, these students have faced a lot of problems to practice their ICT skills. This is because, the teacher only teach students on how to use computer at school. The students may be excellence during that session but when they come back to home, they do not have chances to practice what they have learnt at school. This situation happened because students in rural area not afford to have computer at home. So, by providing the IT centre, they can practice their skill there. Besides, government have to provide the internet access and notebooks for students in rural area. By this way, students can search many information and increase their knowledge at home without going anywhere and this can save their  time. Then, they also can have online discussion to solve any problems that they faced in subjects at school.

It is necessary for student to have freedom to explore the computer function but always under the supervision of teacher. They must get familiar with the computer and application in it. Teacher also should taught student on how to find the correct and accurate information from reliable source. School also play a major role to achieve teaching and learning in ICT. School should provide computer facilities for student use and must be regularly maintained. Other than that, school should organize a program like ‘Literacy Computer Day’ to increase the student awareness and interest in ICT and also give flexibility for students to use computer in the computer laboratory outside school hours. From parent side, they should give full support in everything that teacher and school plan to achieve teaching and learning in ICT. Parents can also send their children to computer class. For parents who are afforded to buy computer and internet service, they are advice to do so. This is because, their children can practise what they had learned at school when they at home but supervision from parents is still required.