Role of ICT in the Education System - Dissertation Example

To build a strong global knowledge, it must be ensured that information is equally accessible to all people. A community can get engaged in various social, economic, scientific, cultural and political activities only if it gets quality education. Proper access to quality education is most important for people with special educational needs (SEN). Such people are broadly defined as “being caused by differences in gender, age, physical and mental abilities, levels of education, ethnicity, income level, etc.

” (ICTs in education for people with special needs, 2006, p.10) All people should have equal opportunities to education irrespective of their cultural and social backgrounds. There is a general tendency to discriminate disabled students and deny them educational facilities. This means that this group of people has low literacy and skills thereby high rate of unemployment. However, in a democratic society, focus is on providing quality education and training to all learners. According to UNESCO “education has to take on the difficult task of turning diversity into a constructive contributory factor of mutual understanding between individuals and groups” (ICTs in education for people with special needs, 2006, p.12) In order to provide effective education to all learners, people with SEN should have access to regular schools with special focus on their needs.

An education systems should be able to survive all difficult situations and make people eligible for any activities in a community and should also make them adaptable to other communities. Many human rights organizations protest against segregation in education facilities and demand equal education to all. Since disabled people have variable educational needs, extra focus should be given on helping them to overcome their functional limitations to access regular education which will pave the way for their self development.

In this regard ICT (information and communication technology) plays an important role in education process as it generates new learning experiences. With the use of technological innovations people with physical disability can be helped to interact, for instance, people with motor disability can be helped to write and people with visual deficiency can be helped to read. In order to remove the barriers that prevent student from getting proper education, application of ICT has become indispensable.

ICT has three main uses like compensation, didactic and communication uses (ICTs in education for people with special needs, 2006, p.31). With the help of AT (assistive technology) disabled people can reduce the difficulties caused by their disabilities to gain access to standard education and participate in all activities of their communities. However, although technology can benefit a person to approach regular schools and activities, it can sometimes enhance segregation of disabled persons (ICTs in education for people with special needs, 2006, p.44). The main objective of AT is to facilitate SEN people to write, read and communicate with a “wide range of input devices, pointing devices, and software.

” For instance, there are alphabetic devices for language impairments, and symbolic devices for speech impairments with which they can develop their own communication board on the computer screen. The computer is very useful for students with cognitive problems to acquire basic skills for learning process. Computers can motivate these students (ICTs in educati