What to Teach in ICT Class for High School Students

ICT Classes for High School Students

ICT (Information and Communication Technology) term is replacing the term of IT (Information Technology) which, in the past time meant the study of how the computer process data in many different ways (software and hardware).

The classes I had in my college years were related to learning about computers hardware (The major components of the computer) and the software (learning about operating systems, and different types of the software beside the Internet).

In these days, the word “communication” is a tricky one, when we are teaching the ICT to the digital natives learner. Students will come to class expecting you to integrate the social communication tools they have been using everyday into this class. They will be asking you: are we going to use facebook in this class, are we going to tweet a little bit, can we use the chat on this class…. etc.

As an educator, I feel their expectations should absolutely be met; especially I am a big believer in differentiations in teaching. As a technology teacher, I feel more productive in teaching those students many different ways of learning today’s technology and give them the chance to explore more about using those different communication tools.

It was very surprising to me, when I was looking for a reference book to use for teaching ICT, that I couldn’t find really a good one. So I decided to start this class this year from scratch and making my own way of teaching it. The units I will be teaching for a semester are going to include:

• Keyboarding
• History of computers
• The major parts of the computer
• Input/output devices
• Operating systems and what are the differences between them
• Examples of some essential software (office application and Google Docs)
• History of the Internet .
• Web 2.0 and how is affecting our life.
• ICT in business and organizations.

If you are visiting my blog and you think I may need to alter or add any other unit please let me know. Thanks for stopping by.