Khilendra Basnyat

Information and communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role for the overall development of a country. This is why the ICT Master Plan (2013-17) considers the use of ICT in education as one of the strategies to achieve the broad goals of education.
The recent School Sector Development Plan (SSDP) aims to use ICT as a significant tool to improve classroom delivery, maximise access to teaching learning materials and the effectiveness and efficiency of educational governance and management. However, the question is how far we are in implementing ICT for teaching and learning, and how much support we have received to implement ICT in education.
Implementing ICT in education in Nepal is a topic of discourse in these days. When such discourse arises, it is natural that a firm image of impediments gets affected in our minds. Time and again, a teacher or a student in a school talks about a lack of ICT related physical infrastructure. But the question for them in this: Are we using ICT in teaching and leaving the way we are expected to use it due to lack of infrastructure? Undoubtedly, this question calls for a critical assessment.
In fact, we need to be in a position to raise awareness among our teachers about how the available ICT resources can be used in the present setting. Then only they will not be able to give the excuse of lack of infrastructure for not using ICT in education and will also be able to instruct the learners according to their interest. Actually, learners of a particular age group become motivate when they find a learning environment where ICT is integrated.
This does not mean that we should always compromise on resources and that we should not build ICT infrastructure. We should enhance them and keep working the available resources so that our education system is as the global modern education system.
Since it is essential to raise awareness among the teachers on the use of the available ICT resources for teaching and learning, we need to run regular strong practice-oriented and academic discourses and identify the experts among us who can shoulder the responsibility of being in a big community of practitioners and sharing their insights with colleagues. Waiting for advanced technological support and infrastructure is not the solution to the present problem. Actually, we need to act from the place where we are now.
Although there are some private organisations which are developing contextual digital teaching learning materials, the matter is how far we are using them and other freely available resources probably not to the extent expected by our policies. For this reason, we should instill confidence in our instructors to use ICT in education effectively. No doubt, we have to face some challenges and the roads ahead are uneven. However, we have opportunities to try them in different ways that suit our local context by accepting our contextual limitations.
In reality, ICT in education should not always be a buzz word in academia; however it should be our practice which needs continued research to see where exactly we stand.