Innovative and flexible approaches to teaching and learning with ICT

Abstract

In the last years, there has been an increasing gap between the current use of technologies for teaching and learning in school and the use of technologies outside of school. Young teachers often do not use technology in their teaching. It is important that student teachers have the possibility to see and experience pedagogical integration of ICT in the classroom during their internship. Our paper presents the results of a project where we have encouraged lecturers and students, future primary and secondary school teachers, for the didactic use of information–communication technology in their teaching. Lecturers have introduced new teaching methods and approaches in 24 courses. The emphasis has been on the encouragement of active learning using ICT to support group or collaborative learning, project-based learning, inquiry learning, blended learning and experiential learning with different communicative, collaborative, informative, and constructive tools. The results show that teachers and students have recognized the benefits of using ICT in terms of actively engaging students with direct participation, providing information and supporting the unstructured discussion in a classroom, and the possibility of faster, more transparent and more picturesque presentation of knowledge with various individualized tasks. They have also pointed out certain disadvantages of using ICT, for example less personal contact with colleagues and distraction with such an enormous amount of data that we have access to with the help of ICT.