Article Review

Being an ICT teacher, researched based on ICT at the primary level always fascinate me to explore its impact through scientifically conducted research. The article that I have chosen for the review is written by Marion Gonzealez and Jose Alonso. The title of the research article is “ICT in Primary Education. Review and of its importance and a proposal”. It has been published in South Florida Journal of Development in 2020. The research article focuses on the importance of ICT based activities used in the teaching pedagogy to boost the motivation of primary students for learning the concept and increase their engagement during the lesson.

The research has been based on the certain ICT based activity that has been incorporated within 5 different subjects for two hour-based lessons for grade 5 lesson. The impact of the activities had been gauged through their performance and level of engagement and has been compared with their previous performance in the same lesson.

The fundamental idea of the research paper revolves around the notion that diverse teaching methods and activities enhance the performance of primary level student especially if its ICT based. The concept which I like is that having technological based activities in routine subject lessons rather than only a separate ICT lesson to learn and adopt technology is much more effective (Kawade, 2012). The Paper emphasizes on the fact, that students are living in an era which is predominated by technology, and if we use the practice of incorporating more innovative lesson through technology integration then the students’ academic performance will be remarkably elevated.

Another research objective that has been added in the paper is that how ICT based activities increases the level of teamwork among the students. Collaborative and cooperative work can be encouraged through these activities. I personally believed that collaborative work can be stimulated through such digital activities. Through my own class experience it usually have dual benefit; first as technology-based activities need awareness to how to handle those tools in accurate manner. Hence, team/group work would help those students who need assistance to use the tool and within their working group they will be effectively guided by the peers. Secondly, the quality of ideas can be exchanged through digital collaboration and problem-solving capabilities would be enhanced. Hence, I would like to agree with the research results where innovative digital task would be a good promoter of collaborative learning.

In the paper, the comparative analysis has been carried out between the students of academic year 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 to assess their level of motivation during the same subject lessons with and without ICT activities. In my opinion, the limitation to such analysis is that many factors like level of student’s aptitude, pre-requisite knowledge and self-awareness of motivation has been neglected, which can affect the result of the study. However, the difference of grades shows that the performance has improved with digital tools but cannot infer that motivation level was high just because of the usage of technology-based activities. This weakens the argument that only digital factor contributes to the student’s motivation level.

As a conclusion, I would say article proves that technology-based activities have a greater effect on primary level student in their performance and achievements. But I would like to mention that its important to use relevant and meaningful ICT activities to boost student interest and motivation rather than just using for the sake of including digital tool.

References:

Kawade. D, (2012), Use of ICT in Primary School, Pioneer Journal, Available at (PDF) Use Of ICT In Primary School (researchgate.net), Accessed on 5th April, 2023)

Gonzalez. M, and Alonso. J, (2021), ICT in Primary Education. Review of its importance and a proposal, South Florida Journal of Development, Volume.2, n.1, p. 131-144, Available at (PDF) ICT in Primary Education. Review of its importance and a proposal (researchgate.net) (Accessed on 3^rd April 2023).