COVID 19 AND ICT INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION:UNFOLDING CHALLENGES

 The Covid 19 pandemic has brought about massive use of digital tools, platforms and strategies like never before in the history of education 

While some of the said digital tools, strategies and platforms are customer friendly and easy to use  others are high tech and therefore beyond the rich of a majority of the global house holders. 

Tastes and preferences also determine which kind of digital tools, platforms and strategies to use.

In Kenya, most technology endowed schools mainly use Zoom  good classroom and WhatsApp platforms. 

Zoom is a very good platform since it allows one _on- one teacher student interaction among other benefits. 

However,  the zoom platform has its fair share of challenges .First,attracts lots of online advertisements which may tempt an online learner to pay more attention to it at  the expense of online. learning

Sometimes,students are tempted to engage in other activities unrelated with learning. This includes but not limited to eating, chewing, drinking, combing hair and singing among others.

Noise making  online among learners is prevalent especially for teachers who lack online class room control.Some students take advantage of the zoom lessons to actually misbehave since the teacher is physically out of their reach. 

Students leave and join online class at will to attend to other personal matters for example going to look for a pen.

In other instances, students make and receive phone calls at will. This can be very irritating not only to fellow students but also to the teachers

 The one hour zoom lessons affects the concentration span of most learners both in primary and secondary schools. This may make learners retain very little of the content taught. 

Distractions by  family members  are evident since most zoom sessions take place at home.In the event of power failure,zoom lessons are discontinued abruptly. This also applies to situations where students run out of internet bundles. This may make it hard to ever catch up with what was taught. 

In the event a student is not keen on the zoom lessons timings, the they miss  out on whole lessons. If a Zoom lesson was scheduled for 7:00 am and may be ,the students forgets and or oversleeps,he or she misses out on the lesson.

Technical hitches sometimes affect audibility therefore affecting effective delivery of a zoom lesson. 

Over  and  above,scheduled zoom meeting for teaching and learning are damn expensive and therefore very exclusionary in as far as curriculum delivery is concerned.