ICT in the official curriculum

Where do you look for ICT in Education curriculum support? Many national education authorities have identified the use of ICT as a critical cross-cutting requirement in all grades and subjects. Some countries have even incorporated suggestions about how ICT should be integrated into subject syllabi. In those countries for example, the Physical Science syllabus has suggestions about how ICT can be used to acquire the subject's specific objectives. Sometimes advise about how ICT might be used is written into teacher subject guides and is taught at teacher training colleges. Your first stop is to identify if such support has been incorporated into your country's curriculum statements.

Activity 1

1. Using the internet browser access the national education authority's website
2. Identify and access the section of the site where they have organized digital versions of the curriculum. The actual steps to do this will be different from country to country, so we can't give you explicit instructions here. However, this exercise is important as you need to be familiar with where these critical documents are hosted. You will need to visit the site from time to time to access the latest versions, so persevere!
3. Within the learning area/topic/grade you teach, access the appropriate curriculum documents. Note, in some countries they refer to these guiding documents as subject syllabi, whilst others mention them as curriculum standards.
4. Now investigate in what ways your local authority has made reference to ICT use within these official documents. This will vary from country to country. Some have created a special section dedicated to cross cutting themes, general objectives and/or a section specifically on ICT integration. Others have incorporated ICT integration suggestions directly into the content/specific objectives section, even providing some teaching suggestions. See if you can identify what your education authority has said formally about the integration of ICT into teaching and learning.

Activity 2

Below is an example of a teacher guide that encourages the use of ICT as a component of the teaching and learning. This example comes from South Africa.

Use this link below to see the entire document.