Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology Issn No : 1006-7930

ICT TOOLS – A CURRENT TREND IN EDUCATION

Snehal Deshmukh, Sudha Lawrence and Prajakta Vaidya
Assistant Professor, Smt. K. G. Shah Department of Computer Applications, Dr. B. M. N College of Home
Science, (Autonomous), R.A. Kidwai Road, Matunga, Mumbai

ABSTRACT
The phrase ‘No life without a phone’ has become very true in the life of youngsters. Having a mobile in your
hand is like having this whole world with you. Rapid scientific and technological advancement, information
revolution caused by technology have given education a new role and shape, thus the role of the teacher is
also in transform. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) currently being used in education to
assist students to learn more effectively by providing teachers with access to a wide range of new teaching
methods. This paper focuses on how technology will be successfully used in classroom to make lectures
interesting for the students by using different (ICT) tools in the classroom during lectures. After making a
detailed study of different ICT tools and its features, a matrix is developed which guides the teachers to
choose the appropriate ICT tool as per their need in teaching.
Keywords: Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Matrix, Technology, Information,
Communication

1. OBJECTIVE
The objectives of the present study are
 To make comparative study of different ICT tools and the facilities and features provided by them.
 To prepare a matrix of the evaluation parameters of different ICT tools which would serve as a guide for
the teachers to decide and select an appropriate ICT tool for their teaching.
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
1. In the research paper [2] the authors have studied how the rapid growth of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) has challenged the teachers’ way of thinking and changed the
educational landscape globally. The result of this study revealed that use of ICT method improves the
quality of both teaching and learning. [2]
2. In the paper [13] the authors have highlighted the use of ICT in higher education and also the impacts
on future developments. The paper also states the role of ICT in transforming teacher-centered learning
to student-centered learning. [13]
3. This research paper [1] highlights the importance of ICT in making the teaching learning enterprise
more productive and meaningful through the use of various tools. It also specifies the role of ICT in
keeping the students updated and thereby assisting them in self-paced learning. [1]
4. This paper [14], focuses on the effective use of ICT tools in education thereby enhancing the student-
centered learning process. [14]
5. This paper [12] reports the findings that have contributed to the continuing use of ICT by experienced
ICT teachers in their teaching. It also gives evidences of the factors which were found to be most
important to these teachers in their teaching such as making the lessons more interesting, easier, diverse
and motivating for both the teachers and the students. [12]
3. INTRODUCTION AND STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
“Technology has forever changed the world we live in. We're online, in one way or another, all day long.
Our phones and computers have become reflections of our personalities, our interests, and our identities.
They hold much that is important to us.” – James Comey. [10] The phrase ‘No life without a phone’ has
become very true in the life of youngsters. Having a mobile in your hand is like having this whole world with
you. In this competitive world, if technical devices can take over all the activities of human beings like
chatting, reading news and for watching movies, then ‘Why can’t technology be used in the education
system?’ Rapid scientific and technological advancement and information revolution caused by technology
have given education a new role and shape, thus the role of the teacher is also in transform.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) stands for information and communication technologies
and are defined as a “Diverse set of technological tools and resources used to communicate and to create,

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Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology Issn No : 1006-7930

disseminate, store, and manage information.” [4] Worldwide research has shown that ICT can lead to an
improved student learning and better teaching methods. It is currently being used in education to assist
students to learn more effectively by providing teachers with access to a wide range of new pedagogy. Also,
it develops the student-teacher relationship, promotes interaction, creativity, active learning and high order
thinking among the students. There are various ICT tools each with its own features. Some ICT tools can be
used for only providing the content of a particular subject, while others can be used for evaluating the
students’ understanding of the topic. There are tools that offers the facility of even executing the SQL
Queries.
This paper focuses on how technology will be successfully used in classroom to make lectures interesting for
the students by using different ICT tools in the classroom during lectures. This paper gives a detail study of
different ICT tools and will act as a guide for the teachers to choose the appropriate ICT tool that suits for
their subjects.
The statement of the problem can be defined as follows:
 Use of ICT is comparatively less even when resources are available
 Lack of awareness about ICT tools in the education field
There is a need of study which will give comprehensive analysis of different ICT tools and their applicability
in various situation.
4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
 This study is based on secondary data, which has been collected from various sources like National and
International Published Journals, Internet, Books, etc.
5. LIMITATION OF STUDY
The paper focuses on the detailed study of the mostly preferred ICT tools and its features and not all the
available ICT Tools.
6. MAIN BODY OF PAPER
Mostly preferred ICT tools
1) Socrative: Socrative [8] assist teachers to collect data from their students via smartphones, laptops and
tablets thus making it is a smart student response system. It can be used as an assessment tool that helps
teachers to test the knowledge of the students in the classroom via quizzes, quick question polls, exit
tickets and space races. It provides instant results with various report generation formats (Whole Class
Excel, Individual Student PDFs, Question Specific PDF) to analyze students’ performance on a particular
topic.
2) My Class Notes: My Class Notes [3] acts as the virtual online classroom for students and teachers.
Students can join classes from anywhere in the world using any web browser. They can take notes,
submit assignments, view their schedule, contact class members and view helpful resources. This tool
can be used only for information sharing purpose.
3) Slide Share: Slide Share [7] is a website that enables teachers to upload their content either privately or
publicly. Presentations, documents and videos in PowerPoint, Word, PDF or Open Document are the
various format that can be used for uploading the content. It also allows its users to view and comment on
the uploaded content.
4) Edmodo: The Edmodo [6] is very teacher-centric or teacher-friendly tool that enables them to share
content, distribute quizzes, assignments, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and
parents. The students and parents can join Edmodo only if the teacher invites.
5) Flexi Quiz: Flexi Quiz [11] is an online tool that can be used to to test the knowledge of the students by
creating, sharing, grading and analyzing quizzes, tests and assessments for a particular topic. A time limit
can be set on any particular question or on the whole quiz. Quizzes can be imported from the spreadsheet.
6) Animoto: Animoto [5] is a video creation tool that produces video from photos, video clips, and music
which can be converted into video slideshows and customized web-based presentations. Its main feature
is that it is a cloud-based application. It is available in both online and mobile platforms and offered for
free and paid upgraded accounts.
7) SQL Code Play: SQL Code Play [9] is a mobile application for Android and iOS device which can be
used by students to learn all the basic SQL queries. It can also be used to learn SQL tutorial offline. It has

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Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology Issn No : 1006-7930

inbuilt editor - SQLite editor that can be used to execute SQL queries. SQL practice app provides more
than thirty simple SQL queries, its explanation, and live output.
After making a detailed study of the above ICT tools and taking into consideration the various features
provided by each of these ICT tools, a matrix was developed which would act as a guide for the teachers to
select the appropriate ICT tool during their lectures. The features that were taken into consideration in
designing the matrix can be summarized as -
 Provides content – suggests whether the chosen ICT tool can be used to provide content of their subject
notes
 Evaluation – gives a solution to the question ‘Whether the ICT tool can be used for evaluation?’
 Performance – helps to understand whether students’ performance can be measured in less time
 Question wise Analysis – provides the information whether each question of the quiz can be analyzed
individually as to which question is answered correctly or wrongly by majority students
 User friendly – suggests whether the tool is easy to use for various purposes like generating quizzes,
evaluating students’ performance and so on
 Downloadable and Printable Result – gives an insight on the fact that whether the tool gives a provision
of getting the result in the printed format
 Software Program Execution – looking at this feature the teacher can decide whether the tool be used
for executing software programs

Fig-1: Results Matrix

7. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The matrix developed in this paper can be extended for all the uncovered and newly emerging ICT tools after
making a detailed study of the features provided by them.
8. CONCLUSION
ICT Tools like My Class Notes, Slide Share, Edmodo, Animoto, SQL Code Play App can be used by the
teachers to provide the notes for their subjects. If the teachers want to conduct a class test in their subject,
they can choose either Socrative, Edmodo or Flexi Quiz. The ICT tool SQL Code Play also provides an
editor to execute different SQL queries. Also, the teacher can ask the students to submit their assignments in
video format using Animoto. Socrative tool provides the overall result sheet of the entire class by which the
teacher can make an analysis of the performance of the students. Thus, the matrix developed in this paper
can act as a guide for the teachers to choose the appropriate tool as per their need in teaching.

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Journal of Xi'an University of Architecture & Technology Issn No : 1006-7930

REFERENCES
1. Anu Sharma, Kapil Gandhar, Sameer Sharma, Seema Sharma, 2011, “Role of ICT in the Process of
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8. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.socrative.teacher&hl=en
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11. https://www.flexiquiz.com/
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