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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(Moses & Croll, 1991). Of course, it can just as easily reinforce authoritarian
teacher-centred patterns.
Multi-cultural classrooms are often sites of invisible, but very real,
hegemonic struggle for cultural dominance (Walkerdine, 1991). Thus, for
example, the content of a geography lesson on ‘farming technology’ can
benefit from video information on traditional and non-traditional methods
of farming with which a teacher may be unfamiliar. Video resources
can provide support to teachers within a multi-cultural classroom, and
have the potential to challenge often-invisible resistance to alternative
viewpoints in a classroom (Moses & Croll, 1991).
Video-based learning resources can introduce interesting factors into
debates about the merits of literacy versus oral-based learning and
cultures. The use of video resources such as archival footage might add
to an understanding of the history of a country. Because video resources
most often are accompanied by audio tracks, they tend to rely on multiple
media to present information that is neither purely oral nor purely literal.
In this way, video can show behaviour, nuance, and relationships in a
variety of contexts that simultaneously demand oral and literary skills
(Moses & Croll, 1991).
The educational impact of video resources depends, at least in part, on
the extent to which instructional designers include interactive learning
activities for students. Viewers, whether adults or children, do not come
to the screen with ‘empty minds’, but have prior learning experiences that
are relevant to how they access and use visual information. In an age
where we are expected to receive, process, and discriminate between
messages at very high levels, video resources need to challenge what
students know and potentially can know. Integrating recognition of prior
learning into the instructional design process (especially of television
broadcasts) is, however, complicated by the fact that audiences tend to
be assumed to be ‘homogeneous’, while distribution of the message
is ‘democratic’.
A correlation exists between video comprehension and reading
comprehension, as does a cognitive interdependence between viewing
and reading skills (Kelley & Gunter, 1996). Educationally, video’s
strength is the attractiveness of its content, not its complexity. This is
important for developing and using video resources in the classroom.
Several international studies have examined this issue, and it is clear
that learning from video is only possible if teachers and parents support
4. Characteristics of Different Media