Teachers Learn Information and Communications Technology for Use in Schools

Teachers Learn Information and Communications Technology for Use in Schools
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 3/7/2012

Workshops on the educational uses of Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) are already rendering positive results as teachers gain useful teaching skills and knowledge to pass onto their students.

The training workshop was held from Monday February 13 to Friday March 2nd at the Professor Juan Bosch OMA Regional Training Center of the General Directorate of the Customs Offices. The workshop was given under the direction of Costa Rican teacher Paul Alvarado Quesada, expert in audiovisual and multimedia production.

The Ministry of Education, through the National Institute of Teacher Training and Education (INAFOCAM in Spanish), concluded the second module of the training program that seeks to train Dominican school teachers in the use of Information and Communications Technology for teaching purposes. Ninety elementary school coordinators from the country’s five educational districts participated.

The training workshop was held from Monday February 13 to Friday March 2nd at the Professor Juan Bosch OMA Regional Training Center of the General Directorate of the Customs Offices. The workshop was given under the direction of Costa Rican teacher Paul Alvarado Quesada, expert in audiovisual and multimedia production.

Participants included representatives of Educational Regions 15 of Santo Domingo, 05 of San Pedro de Macorís, 14 of Nagua, 12 of Higuey and 17 of Monte Plata. Teaching coordinators will have the responsibility of replicating to their peers the skills they learned in the use of ICTs.

The content at the teacher training workshops included: Learning to learn about the uses of ICTs, learning to use the Central American Educational Community portal (CEDUCAR in Spanish), challenges and perspectives of the Society of Knowledge, digital literacy, self-teaching and learning about the authors of the constructivist approach like Vigotsky, Piaget, Novak and Ausubel.

They also learned multiple intelligences, Power Point for educational presentations, C- Map Tool for educational concepts, forum as a pedagogical tool, competencies of the educator for the 21st century and the meditational pedagogical model in virtual environments.

Evidence that teachers are learning to use ICTs

Costa Rican teacher, Paul Alvarado Quesada praised the sincerity and interest of the Dominican teachers who participated in the workshops on the teaching uses of ICTs. He said there was ample evidence of learning on their part, having taken place in the second training module of new technology.

“Something as simple as the time in which the teachers are doing the work and the high quality they are rendering it. To do a Power Point takes a morning. The idea is that a topic having to do with technology in education is presented and they research it on the Internet. This is a skill that some of them did not have, such as how to search through this incredible amount of information available on the Internet.  This is how we see they are learning how to use search engines and how to get access to specific pages,” explained Alvarado.

“There are examples of teachers who, since they left the first workshop, began to implement what they learned with their colleagues as they coordinate with in their respective schools.  It is the case that some of them are making conceptual maps with their coordinates. Before, they made them but they were not making them as called for in the theory of the conceptual map.”

He pointed out other evidence of how the 90 attending coordinators were learning – they have created a blog and have learned how to use it. “The difference is that some use it more than others.”

Alvarado said the teachers should be in permanent contact with information and communication technology tools to the extent that they can be on a par with the students who have a working knowledge of these devices. They can and should create an atmosphere of motivation that will have promote learning in the schools.

“The fundamental idea is how can they use the ICT tools to improve their classrooms, to make them more stimulating and fun for the students, so that the students waste less time looking at their cell phones in class and more time using them to look up things of interest on the Internet or for teachers to send written materials, videos or audio so that they are always taking advantage of these tools the students have and using them for education,” said Alvarado.

Participants’ Opinion of the Workshops

Several participants were interviewed to see what their reactions were to the workshops. Two of them were Orlando Nazario León Amparo, academic coordinator of the San Juan Bautista de La Salle in the Simón Bolívar section and Martina Mateo Matos who teaches in the morning at the General Gregorio Luperón and in the afternoon session is the pedagogical coordinator.

They both agreed that after the second module of the three that make up the training, they already have a different vision of how to combine academic computer information to transmit the message to their students. They say that it has enabled them to find the adequate tools to teach their courses in a much better and more engaging fashion for their students.

They pointed to the scholastic feedback they are achieving by using the blogs, “immediately after receiving this tool, I applied it and the children are already working on their own blogs as well as the material on my blog that we started working on together,” explained Mr. Orlando.

Teaching coordinators Higuey and Monte Plata working on applications where they combine teaching knowledge with information and communication technology.