THE IMPLICATIONS OF ICT AND NKS FOR SCIENCE TEACHING: WHITHER NIGERIA BY FRANCISCA ALADEJANA INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY,ILE-IFE,NIGERIA.

INTRODUCTION Globally, ICT use is fast gaining prominence. Merits of ICT use include: Very few jobs today would not require the use of either or all of skills in technology. Promote students intellectual qualities and improve school attendance Promote supportive, interactive teaching and enable the creating of more effective curriculum Increase assess through distance learning Science teaching at the various levels still retain the old conservative approach teaching and learning in Nigeria to change with computer brought into the classroom.

ICT USES IN NIGERIA Science teaching at the various levels still retain the old conservative approach. With the increased momentum of technological revolution across the globe, there is the need for teaching and learning in Nigeria to change, such that the computer is brought into the classroom.

WHAT IS NKS ? NKS is a new concept consisting of 800 programmes covering a huge range of computational functions and concepts with extremely short and clear programmes that make use of the many programming paradigm in Mathematica NKS involves changing paradigm from computational sciences to the science computation. With NKS,many if not all natural processes can be thought of, as computations driven by simple algorithms, like biological growth patterns

OBJECTIVES The specific objectives of the study are to: Assess the availability of resources for computer assisted teaching and learning Identify other problems of ICT use for teaching and learning. Examine attitude to ICT and NKS use for learning among Nigerian undergraduates Determine the impact of the use of simple computer experiments and programmes on the learning of science

METHODOLOGY Multiple research methods: questionnaire, observation, discussion and interview Two questionnaires; ARCAL to assess availability of resources Administered on 106 teachers from 25 secondary schools Selwyn-Soh Information Technology Attitude Scale (SSITAS) on 50 OAU undergraduates The five sub-scales of attitude assessed: affective; usefulness; behaviour; control and defense components

METHODOLOGY (contd.) Semi-structured interview of 20 secondary school science teachers Observations were carried out in the classes of 10 secondary school science teachers Analysis by descriptive statistics Rating of the subscales and overall attitude: 0-20 very poor; poor; good; very good.

RESULTS Teachers Use of ICT, NKS o None of the teachers have heard about NKS and its relevance to science teaching o 9.43% asked students to browse on the internet 2.83 % have used overhead projectors and 1.89% makes use of CD-ROM containing educational topics 20.0% of schools have one or two computers While 4.0% have more than two computers.

RESULTS (contd.) None of the schools have Laptop, LCD projector, video recorder, talking books, floor robots, …… 4.0% of the schools has an overhead projector; 4.0% has fixed line internet access 5.67% of teachers have personal computers….used for business and commercial purposes Some students have access to computer and internet outside the school setting Thus classrooms are still very much traditional without much influence on ICT and NKS.

OTHER PROBLEMS OF THE USE OF ICT Unreliable internet assess in schools Lack of electricity Epileptic power supply Population explosion Inadequate funding Lack of technical experts Government policy Lack of professional training

RECOMMENDATIONS Government should make concerted efforts to provide the required ICT facilities for secondary schools. There is need for government policies to take care of issues such as class size…………. Both pre-service and in-service training are necessary. NKS should be introduced to many other countries through workshops and seminars Fear and apprehensiveness of learners must be allayed by teachers.