Case study on adaptability to ICT enabled childhood education in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka is piloting One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project in selected primary schools in the country. In this context a remote school participating in the project in Badulla district was selected for this study. ICT enabled teaching and learning is very new concept for teaching children and also a need to adjust to new learning styles of children. We need to study the adaptability to ICT enabled education environment. For this a mixed approach quantitative and qualitative method is used to gather data by questionnaire and interviewing of teachers, children and parents of the school. Firstly, questioning teachers led to the second step of discussing and observing children and to the third step of speaking with parents. The results obtained using the method shows that activities using OLPC increase innovation and creativity of children in drawing, audio recording and video capturing compared to traditional existing primary school pedagogy based on books. Further it helped them to share knowledge, explore required learning beyond the curriculum. From the parental views, this OLPC led satisfactory learning and created curiosity. Creativity, sharing, collaboration, independent learning, formal mathematic learning are seems to be increased. Parents expressed proudness and privilege of having free OLPC while identified negative impacts like addiction to the OLPC use and neglecting physical game during off school time.