ICT tasks for Classroom use

The integration of ICT into Classrooms provides both the teacher and pupils’ new ways
of exploring learning. This will make the students to begin work at their own level and
develop additional ICT skills. The approach should be applied to various activities being
carried out in the school system; ranging from the Student Registration or documentation,
classroom register, student assessment records and other vital records available (Marion
Rutland, 1999).

Basic ICT activities should include

• Communicating Information-Desktop Publishing

ICT plays a key role as enabling technology in organizing information sharing. As a
design and technology teacher, desktop publishing software’s can enhance production
of good designs. Such designs could be presented even in 2D and 3D models for
better comprehension by the learners. Examples of Desktop publishing software’s are
Microsoft Publisher, CorelDraw, and Photoshop.

• Using Spreadsheets for Data processing

Spreadsheet software can be use for organizing numeric data. This will allow
electronic processing with built-in features of such software. Examples of
spreadsheets include; Microsoft Excel, SPSS(Statistical Package for Social Sciences),
Open Calc (Open Office Suite).
The table below shows a record of an inter-house sports competition. The students
can be taught how to workout simple mathematical functions to compute the total
marks by each house and for each game.

HOUSES
GAME YELLOW RED ORANGE BLUE GREEN BROWN TOTAL
FOOTBALL 2 2 3 4 4 9
HANDBALL 2 5 1 3 1 12
VOLLEY
BALL 2 3 6 3 3 6
TOTAL
POINTS
YELLOW RED ORANGE BLUE GREEN BROWN TOTAL
AVERAGES

• Handling Information using Databases

As a specialist design and technology teacher, the students should learn how to create
simple database applications. This will make them active participants on record
keeping and processing. Examples of database management software’s’ include
Microsoft Access, Oracle, Dbase and MySQL.
Consider the examination record; a sample database could be developed to store this
information as shown below;
A database query can help the teacher to automate the calculations involve in finding
the total marks obtained by each student. This is presented below;

• Using the Internet for research

The internet is a good resource place for accessing teaching/learning resources. It is a
global collection of computer networks that offers email, instant messaging, file
transfer, video conferencing and many more. The common search engines are
www.google.com, www.yahoo.com, www.search.com, www.altavista.com etc.