THE ROLE OF ICT IN THE NEW NORMAL

Joice L. Yumul

According to techterms.com, Information and Communication Technologies refer to technologies that provide access to information through telecommunications. It is similar to Information Technology (IT) but focuses primarily on communication technologies. This includes the Internet, wireless networks, cell phones, and other communication mediums. Information can come in many forms such as sound, video, text, and images, so when you think of what technology it is available that produces these aspects of information and sometimes a combination of all these, we refer to such technology as mobile phones, digital cameras, video cameras for example.

Today, information and communication technologies are the one thing and so the repertoire of technologies expands further to encompass computers and computerrelated products, email, and other forms of communication (Finger et al., 2007).

ICT pervades all facet of life, providing faster, newer and greater ways for people to communicate and learn to access information. Due to the pandemic we are facing right now, we can still provide education to the learners by using different platforms and ICT is one of the mediums we can use to communicate and deliver our lessons. Right now, we are grappling with the new normal in education, wherein teachers are not used to work at home and can adapt quickly. Through the help of ICT, we can be able to cope up with different struggles in delivering our lessons. In addition, ICT provides an avenue to conduct webinars for the professional growth of teachers. No one said it would be easy, but by adapting new digital tools and ways of working, it is possible to maintain those vital connections and continue to deliver education to the learners without impacting on their own personal well-being.

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The author is Teacher I at Benigno S. Aquino NHS, SDO Tarlac Province