Teaching computer skills: A personal experience
Presentation by: Stella Maris Namae
Session E | 11:25 – 11:45 | Room 207
Abstract:
Teaching computer skills: A personal experience
The presentation will report on my experience of introducing Information Communication Technology (ICT) to in-service teachers in Uganda secondary schools. As an ICT instructor at MM College, I was expected to teach in-service teachers basic computer skills and how they would in-turn use these in their classroom instruction. This phenomenological paper will discuss my experience as an ICT instructor working with Uganda secondary school in-service teachers. It will illuminate my struggle to engage with in-service teachers in Uganda secondary schools who were first timers with computer technology. Further, it will highlight my experience of the shift in goals and objectives as the in-service teachers engaged with ICT. These shift in goals and objectives produced appreciable outcome with regard to using tools within the Microsoft (MS) suites. Hence, these reflected the realities of the participating in-service teachers including what they can and cannot do within the allotted time. This required patience on my part so as to adjust to the realities that were unfolding within the class. This prompted me to consider ways to recover lost time and control of space to accomplish what was to be done with the group during the day. The attentiveness to the experience offered me a sense of classroom realities –from the cubicles to the attitudes of in-service teachers and how these realities rubbed in on my classroom management skills. Out of these experience emerged the realization that as an instructor, my embodied reaction in the moment of uncertainty can become the focus of understanding the art of working with first timers.
