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|title=Training of Future Primary School Teachers for Application of ICT at Language Lessons
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-848/ICTERI-2012-CEUR-WS-paper-24-p-228-235.pdf
|volume=Vol-848
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/icteri/Khizhnyak12
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==Training of Future Primary School Teachers for Application of ICT at Language Lessons==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-848/ICTERI-2012-CEUR-WS-paper-24-p-228-235.pdf
Training of Future Primary School Teachers for
Application of ICT at Language Lessons
Inna Khizhnyak1
1
Slovyansk State Pedagogical University, General Batyuk st., 19,
84121 Slovyansk, Donetsk reg., Ukrainе
inngen@mail.ru
Abstract. The necessity of training of the future primary-school teachers for
application of information communication technologies (ICT) in their
professional activity is proven in the article. The author considers the essence of
the teacher’s language didactic competence, reveals constituent components of
the latter, and proves the urgency of the problem of introducing the future
primary school teachers to the basics of electronic language didactics as a
branch of education studies. On this basis the possibilities of training the
students in making language skills developing electronic and multimedia course
books and also in their methodically competent application at the lessons in the
primary school are described. The possibilities of using the standard set of
Microsoft Office programmes to achieve language and speech skills
improvement are also highlighted.
Keywords: information and communicative technologies, methodology of
teaching Ukrainian language, primary-school pupils, multimedia course books,
electronic course books
Key Terms: TeachingProcess, ICTComponent, Development, Integration,
StandardizationProcess
1 Introduction
The modern innovative processes in the Ukrainian educational system caused by all-
embracing informatization of world-wide community life are based on the laws of
Ukraine “About the conception of the national programme of informatization” (№
75/98-VR of 04.02.1998) with amendments introduced according to the laws N 3421-
IV (3421-15) of 09.02.2006, VVR, 2006, N 22, article 199, N 3610-VI (3610-17) of
07.07.2011), according to the law “About the fundamentals of information-oriented
society development in Ukraine for 2007 – 2015” (№ 537-V of 9.01.2007) and others.
Nowadays one can observe that a considerable period (more than several decades)
of introducing of information-communicative technologies into the educational reality
has given certain results: there are domestic theoretical and practical works on
problems of educational system informatization in Ukraine, multimedia and electronic
Training of Future Primary School Teachers for Application of ICT … 229
course books are made for pupils of various age, conventional school textbooks are
being made over into electronic form, educational programmes employing school
netbooks are being tested, in primary schools in particular, etc. Besides these reserves
are daily supplemented with or changed by new theoretical generalizations, with
results of applied researches of scientists, with electronic learning aids, etc. Thus, the
process of educational system informatization is evolving and generally speaking its
development can be defined as rapid.
Taking into account the constant need of all educational system stages for
competent educators who understand the interests of modern pupils and are able to
adjust them to the didactical aim, the leading place in the informatization of education
belongs to the training of teachers and instructors with a sufficient level of
informational-communicative competence in various educational branches. The
primary stage of education as a basic one for the whole education of a person plays an
important role in this process.
The urgency of the training of primary school teachers in the course of
informatization is closely considered by modern Ukrainian scientists such as
O.Bigych, I.Bogdanova, V.Imber, A.Kolomiyets, L.Morska, L.Petukhova, I.Shyman
and others. In their works is emphasized the fact that “the state recognises one of the
most significant condition of updating of education. That is the training and advanced
training of the teaching staff and their acquirement of modern information
technologies” [3, p. 2]. It is mentioned that in this regard innovative technologies and
individual-oriented approach in universities contain great implicit opportunities.
All the scientists agree on the point that the only way to solve this problem is to
update the educational system as a whole and the system of occupational teacher
training which are “an integral unit of interrelated and interdependent constituents
(social and economic, special, psychological and cultural) which have the common
goal to bring up an all-round person” [3, p. 3].
The majority of researches of modern Ukrainian scientists deal with the problems
of moulding the informational competence of future primary school teachers. There is
certain theoretical and methodological groundwork:
the notion of “informational culture” of a primary school teacher is defined and
described in detail. The necessity of its forming for modern teachers:
“Informational culture is considered as integrated personal formation which is the
cause and indicator of training, is a system of attainments, abilities and skills in
stating the need for information, the accomplishment of the search for the
necessary information considering the whole range of information resources,
picking, estimation, saving, integration, structuring and creation of new
information. The necessity of forming informational culture is determined by the
changes of informational resources in the educational process in universities and
comprehensive schools. The network of infobases, of electronic educational and
interdisciplinary connections is expanding [6, p. 3];
the necessity of new approaches to the forming of occupational competence of
teachers is proven: “Developing and improving the informatization process in the
educational institutions it is essential to learn as many teachers as possible to use
new ways of giving lessons applying information-communicative technologies and
to introduce them into the process of creation and filling of the information
medium [8, с. 33];
230 I. Khizhnyak
approaches to the use of information-communicative technologies in the
educational process are singled out: complex or partial use of ready electronic
editions for educational purposes and the introduction of applied and instrumental
programme tools to work out one’s own learning aids etc. [1, p. 3]
At the same time the issue of forming the informational-communicative
competence of future teachers in regard to the acquirement of subject methodology is
yet insufficiently considered. Apparently during their study the students must receive
not only general knowledge of information science and information-communicative
technologies but also specialized knowledge as to how apply information-
communicative technologies while teaching every single subject on the primary stage
of school. These points are not yet brought to light in the Ukrainian science.
While examining the issue of introducing of information-communicative
technologies into the process of teaching a foreign language, one ascertains that there
exist theoretical works on this topic in Ukraine but their number is few and mainly
concerning the learning of a foreign language (L.Morska, L. Kostikova and others).
Moreover the majority of scientists cover these issues as a part of other ones – of a
more general nature. There is a somewhat different situation in the Russian
methodological science: in the recent years deep research is carried on in the field of
language education (E.Azimov, M.Bovtenko, A.Bogomolov, L.Dunayeva,
K.Piotrovska, E.Polat and others), of electronic language education (O.Hartzov).
Owing to these researches the genres of electronic language-teaching editions of
educational kind are defined and classified, the methods of their use in the educational
process are worked out. However the majority of these researches concern the
teaching of foreign languages or the teaching of Russian as a foreign language.
Applying of information-communicative technologies as a means of stimulation of
the process of learning of one’s native language on the primary stage has not been yet
investigated.
The aim of our article is to illustrate the necessity for a future primary school
teacher to master the fundamentals of electronic language education and to
demonstrate the prospects of forming his/her skills in the making of language-
teaching course books for primary school pupils.
Considering the formation of language education competence of the primary
school teacher-training faculty we describe it as an educational phenomenon and thus
define it as an ability to organize a high-grade process of formation of primary school
pupils’ language and speech skills, on high-quality scientific and methodological
levels, At the same time the teacher must take into account psychological and
educational specific character, use different organization forms of the teaching-
educational process and constantly improve himself/herself.
In the structure of this educational phenomenon we single out three groups of
constituents: basic (psychological-educational, linguistic), main (linguistic-
methodological and informational-communicative) and superstructure (diagnostic,
acmeological). Recognising the importance of all the constituents and their role in the
formation of the language education competence of a teacher we emphasize the
significance of the informational-communicative constituent as the main indicator of
professional ability of a modern teacher.
In the field of language teaching the formation of the informational-communicative
constituent of the language education competence consists first of all in the
Training of Future Primary School Teachers for Application of ICT … 231
acquaintance of the students with the fundamentals of the electronic language
education, its significance, the classification of the genres of electronic and
multimedia educational and speech production, criteria of its analysis, the methods of
its applying, etc.
Concerning this O.Hartsov says that “a modern teacher must not only possess the
professional knowledge of his subject but also be able to apply freely didactical and
methodological possibilities of new information technologies in practice. Global
integration, general informatization, expansion of economic, political and cultural
contacts between countries, democratization of education, migration of workers,
spreading of mass media favour the forming of a unified worldwide multi-national,
crosscultural, tolerant and multilingual media with new development patterns” [4, p.
34].
The scientist sees the aim of electronic language education in the integration of
experience of the traditional methods of language teaching with the advantages of
information technologies and as the main function of the electronic language
education he considers in supplying theoretic and practical basis of language teaching
under the conditions of information community. According to the successful thought
of O.Hartsov, language education transforms the spontaneous process of
informatization of the theory and practice of foreign language teaching into a
scientific system guided by teachers- linguists [4].
The scientist names a large number of methods of electronic language teaching
(object-oriented, project method, the method of visual editing, of the activation of
language abilities, of information resource, of educational event and of interaction
scenarios) emphasizing that the method of visual editing is of paramount importance
for a future teacher. According to the estimation of O.Hartsov, application of this
method allows to solve such problems of language education as:
to produce electronic learning aids in the necessary amount independently of the
specific character of a course;
to create electronic learning aids on the base of dynamically updatable educational
supplies;
to constantly renew the present electronic learning aids according to the changes in
reality, to the pupils’ requirements and the development of electronic language
teaching methods;
to create counterparts to the present electronic learning aids which favour the
improvement of the education quality;
to engage in the process of producing electronic learning aids as many teachers as
possible [4, p. 149].
In the basis of this method lies the usage of widely available and well-known
software which does not require specialized computer science knowledge or
programming skills. Students and teachers should use this software to create
electronic learning aids. We agree with O.Hartsov as to the role of the method of
visual editing since the students of the primary-school teacher-training faculty have to
master a large amount of various teaching materials from different branches of
science for their future occupation. That is why their computer science competence
develops on the most general level of operating.
Thus, the main task of training the students of the primary-school teacher-training
faculty for the application of the fundamentals of electronic learning tools of
232 I. Khizhnyak
language education in the future professional activity consists in defining the most
optimal set of computer programmes which allow to create educational language
teaching aids, to structure them, to update them efficiently, etc. Describing the
possibilities of producing electronic supplements for language and speech lessons in
the primary school scientists and teachers chiefly point to the standard set of
Microsoft Office programmes with the Word plug-in, WordPad, Excel, Paint,
especially PowerPoint. In the list of programmes and educational courses be the
resource centre “Information technologies in the language teaching” SpellMaster
Word-Based Games, HotPotatoes, Filamentality and others are pointed out [9].
It is worth noticing that each of the programmes becoming more complex acquires
more possibilities but in practice the most popular among the primary school teachers
stands out the programme Microsoft PowerPoint. Its advantages in the fast producing
of the electronic supplements for language and speech lessons, its possibilities to
combine various methods of representation the language teaching material are
indisputable. We suppose that the foundation of popularity of the programme
Microsoft PowerPoint among teachers lies in its availability (one does not have to
search for anything, to download or to study possibilities, etc.). But as for their
resources the above mentioned programmes surpass PowerPoint in many issues.
Thus, the problem of choice of software for the training of future primary school
teachers and for creating electronic aids for language and speech lessons lies in the
orientation to the work in those programmes which they will be able to use in the
future without difficulties. Here we should describe one more programme of the
standard set of Microsoft Office programmes, it is Microsoft Publisher. This
programme is not popular and widely used well enough.
The programme Microsoft Publisher possesses a wide range of functions –
designing of advertisements, business cards, bulletins, booklets, etc. In the teacher’s
work there constantly emerge a necessity to create such journalistic editions of a
sufficient quality. But we consider it advisable with educational purpose to direct
students on the creation of a web page in this plug-in of Microsoft Office with
educational purpose. Unfortunately, the option “web page” is missing from the latest
versions of the programme, they allow only to edit and to add to the examples created
in the Microsoft Office Publisher 2003. That is why we give the students a pattern
suggesting them to work out a fragment of an electronic course book on a definite
topic using Microsoft Publisher of any version.
It is worth mentioning that this programme is of the same kind in its structure and
means of usage as other ones in the set of programmes Microsoft Office, This allows
a person without specialized computer science knowledge to master it fast, and in
contrast to PowerPoint it has an important feature – interactivity, that is it gives a
pupil an opportunity to navigate pages independently.
The availability of a large number of patterns and coloured schemes makes it
possible to create a unique look of every single electronic learning aid for language
and speech lessons and the set of elements to manage the form (switches, flags, text
and edit boxes, etc.) allows to make tests to check the progress of primary school
pupils using both closed and open forms of tests. The results of fulfilment can be
preserved in a separate file or can be delivered per e-mail.
All this makes primary school language teaching convenient as the psychological
peculiarities of primary school pupils require application of a vast number of visual
Training of Future Primary School Teachers for Application of ICT … 233
aids and the present tests often do not admit insertion of pictures, animation pictures
or sounds which do not relate immediately to the task. Besides an important
favourable feature of application of the programme with educational purpose we see
in the possibility to preserve the result in the layout of one web page without
downloading it into Internet. This web page can be opened by means of any browser.
As an example can serve an electronic course book in Ukrainian language for the
fourth grade pupils on the topic “Adjective as a part of speech” made in 2011 by
means of the programme Microsoft Publisher within the framework of a master’s
thesis at the primary school teacher-training faculty of Slovyansk state teacher
training university. This electronic course book contains five main pages: “Hello!”,
“Think”, “Try”, “Your helpmates”, “Test yourself”. They contain correspondingly the
main material concerning adjective as a part of speech (fig. 1), a task to select an
appropriate adjective for a given animation picture, tasks to describe the characters of
animated situations and to compose a text with a large number of adjectives, concise
theoretical material on grammar characteristics of adjectives and their lexical
categories (fig. 2), tests and other tasks to check attainments, abilities and skills of the
fourth grade pupils (fig. 3).
Fig. 12. A fragment of the page “Hello” of the electronic course book “The Land of
Adjectives”.
234 I. Khizhnyak
Fig. 13. A fragment of the page “Think” of the electronic course book “The Land of
Adjectives”.
Fig. 14. A fragment of the page “Test yourself” of the electronic course book “The Land of
Adjectives”.
Such contents and structure of the course book allow to apply it at the lessons
(fragmentary), in the individual, unassisted, home work, etc.
Consequently, the issue of informatization of education on all its stages requires
urgent attention to the training of teaching staff taking into account information-
communicative competence. In the field of the methods of Ukrainian language
teaching of future primary school teachers we define an educational phenomenon of
language education competence of a teacher and its information-communicative
constituent as chief guiding lines of modern language education training. The basis of
this process is the mastering of theoretical footing of electronic language education
and mastering of the skills of making electronic language teaching aids depending on
specific purposes of their employment.
The outlooks for further scientific researches in this field are in the detection and
study of another available and user friendly software for students to create electronic
language teaching supplements for language and speech lessons in primary school.
References
1. Bigych, O. B.: Information-Communicative Portfolio of a Teacher as a Means of his
Professional Independence. In: Bulletin of the Vasyl Karazin Kharkiv National University.
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2. Bovtenko, M. A.: Computer Means of Language Teaching: Modern Opportunities/ In: Case
Studies. vol. 5, pp. 25 – 37. (2011) (in Russian).
3. Bogdanova, I. M.: Professional Teacher Training of Future Teachers by Means of
Innovative Technologies: Author’s Abstract of Dissertation of a Doctor of Educational
Sciences. Kyiv (2003) (in Ukrainian).
Training of Future Primary School Teachers for Application of ICT … 235
4. Hartsov, A. D.: Electronic Language Education in the System of Innovative Language
Teaching: Author’s Abstract of Dissertation of a Doctor of Educational Sciences. The
Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, Moscow (2009) (in Russian).
5. Imber, V. I.: Educational Conditions of Applying Multimedia Means of Teaching in the
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