Technological Infrastructure and Use of ICT in Education in ... - ADEA

Technological Infrastructure and Use of ICT in Education in Africa: an overview
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Increasingly, however, extensive face-to-face contact is coming to be
viewed as an unnecessary luxury due to its expense. This has been
further influenced by the tendency of many educators to use face-to-face
contact to communicate the curriculum to learners, a use for which it is
ill suited both educationally and financially. Consequently, as has been
noted in the previous section, many traditional face-to-face institutions
now seek to use distance education and resource-based learning
methods to overcome some of the more inefficient uses of face-to-face
contact. Many distance education methods seek to emulate or replicate
this medium by using combinations of other media and a selection of
technologies to replace some of the traditional functions of face-to-face
contact.
4.2.....Text
The term ‘text’ is commonly used to refer to scripted words and other
related signs like numbers (Bates, 1995, p116). For the purpose of this
discussion, however, text also includes graphics such as pictures, charts,
diagrams, and maps. It is often debated whether text or face-to-face
contact has been or is the dominant teaching medium, which has
the greater influence, and which is the most effective. Such debate
erroneously protects one medium at the expense of the other, thereby
ignoring the individual strengths and complementary nature of different
media.
Various technologies can be used to facilitate textual media communication
between learners and educators. For example, an educator may
write a note on a chalkboard, course design teams may develop printed
study guides for learners to read, learners may type or write assignments,
and both educators and learners might participate in e-mail discussion
lists. Text has many applications. To name but a few examples, it can
serve as a record of activity, as a source for detailed explanation, as a
reference for a summary of key concepts, or to support correspondence
(including post, facsimile, courier, and electronic mail).
Text can precisely represent facts, abstract ideas, rules, principles,
and detailed, lengthy or complex arguments. It is good for narrative
or story-telling, and, in the hands of a skilled writer, can lend itself to
interpretation and imagination (Bates, 1995, p119).
4. Characteristics of Different Media