INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY GLOBALISATION MULTICULTURALISM

The days of considering technology simply as an enhancement for the instruction of students, a tool for computational academic scholarship, or the means to the efficient operation of the institution are past. Today, information technology is becoming a mission-critical, central foundation to the future of higher education.

Information Technology and Research

The most obvious advantage of modern Internet-based information technology is in the area of research. Until the last decades of the 20th century, advanced research in higher education usually required expensive and time consuming travel to distant libraries and research centres. With modern connectivity, however, researchers can engage each other and share information on a scale previously unimaginable.

Information Technology and Instruction

PowerPoint presentation software illuminates lectures with images, video and audio, and modern Internet-equipped classrooms allow teachers to quickly link to online video sites, and demonstrate points with video illustrations.

Internet-Based Information Technology and Traditional Learning

Twenty-first century information technology allows students to quickly and easily access centuries of accumulated knowledge on a scale that their parents, working with library card catalogues and physical texts, could not possibly understand. This presents incomparable benefits for complete and comprehensive learning.

Disadvantages of Internet-Based Information Technology

On the other hand, what contemporary students gain in breadth and scope of understanding, they often miss in terms of depth and sophistication. For example, the Internet may give students immediate access to every piece of English drama in the 16th century, but that alone will not provide the student with a significantly deeper understanding of Shakespeare.

The advancement of technology, globalisation and multiculturalism

Advances in technology are one of the main reasons that globalisation has increased and intensified in the past decade.

In information and communication technology (ICT) innovations have become smaller in size, more efficient and often more affordable. The role of ICT is both a symbol and an aspect of globalisation. ICT are a symbol because they provide the most powerful networking platform for communication, information, education, and business that is unrestricted by borders (for example, the Internet is becoming the basis for the globalisation of knowledge - a universal, globally accessible library). ICT are also an aspect of globalisation in the sense that new technologies have such an impact on mobility and communication that technological change implies social and other changes around the globe. The reality of globalisation can be understood by focusing on this prime mover, ICT; globalisation builds on ICT and drives from ICT.

The advancement of technology dissolves international boundaries and opens cultures to a whole new arena enabling globalisation to occur (Smith & Ward 2000). Globalisation can interconnect the world, support economic development, provide information availability and assist in developing a global village (Moahi 2007).

The term globalisation has been associated with modern times through the strict linkage between modern technological discoveries; the Internet and the deriving global village (McLuhan 1962) is perhaps the most famous association.

Multiculturalism is detectable when different but interwoven cultures or ethnicities can be recognised in a certain geographic region.

The world is becoming smaller every day because advanced technology is turning the world into a small village (Da Silva Rodrigues 2009).
Globalisation is the cultural condition, or simply culture, that appears with intense and continued exchanges among people of different cultures and ethnicities when the original cultures and ethnicities themselves are no more detectable.

Globalisation as a process affects environmental resources, culture(s), including peoples well-being, political systems, national sovereignty, national security, agriculture, public health / health care, economic systems / international trade, transportation, information technology / communication, education, and global governance.

The primary result of this process has been the integration of capital, technology, information, and people across national borders.

Internationalisation For teaching, the process of internationalisation means adding to or enhancing the international content of all curricula and the promotion of study abroad among both students and faculty.

The process of internationalisation includes developing research and related activities which have an international, as well as a domestic focus.

Culture and its implications for e-learning

Universities around the world are currently undergoing a large number of competitive pressures from many different stakeholders (governments, firms, students, parents, partners, etc.). This fact, as a result of the economic and social globalisation process, is causing a restructuring of higher education. The changes are not due only to increased demand for quality, acquiring skills, and adapting to the scales and criteria of the Bologna process, for example, but also to the changing needs of a society that has in lifelong learning one of the key elements for the future of education.

The use of ICT in education and training is transforming the way higher education institutions are developing their activities. New opportunities have emerged to integrate pedagogical and technological resources, to enlarge flexibility across the learning process, and to improve the communication between teachers and students, and the interaction between different educational resources. The increasing use of ICT, and particularly the Internet, in the educational process of universities across Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries explains the growing adoption of e-learning systems, the development of online courses, and the emergence of fully online universities. That is the true concept of the global market.

The technology and multiculturalism will be at the heart of educational, social and political development in the coming decades.
Important points: 1. technology brings with it many problems which require more than mere celebration or condemnation on the part of the educator. 2. multiculturalism is a debate in which educators need to enter, and it will take all into reconsideration of concepts of culture, society and identity. 3. education has to consider the impact of both the debates and the accompanying realities which studying involves. The principles and practice of education will need to be reconsidered in the light of multicultural issues. The coming together of technology and multiculturalism in education is not an option. It is a reality with which we have yet to come to terms.

multiple literacies

As we have entered a new millennium, most people are by now aware that we are in the midst of one of the most dramatic technological revolutions in history that is changing everything from the ways that we work, communicate, and spend our leisure time. The technological revolution that centres on computer, information, communication, and multimedia technologies, is often interpreted as the beginnings of a knowledge or information society, and therefore gives education a central role in every aspect of life. We need multiple literacies for our multicultural society, we need to develop new literacies to meet the challenge of the new technologies, and the literacies of diverse sorts, including a more fundamental importance for print literacy, are of crucial importance in restructuring education for a high tech and multicultural society and global culture. The argument is that in a period of dramatic technological and social change, education needs to cultivate a variety of new types of literacies to make education relevant to the demands of a new millennium. New technologies are changing every aspect of our society and culture, we need to understand and make use of them to be able to understand and transform our worlds.

To reading, writing, and traditional print literacies, in an era of technological revolution and new technologies we need to develop new forms of media literacy, computer literacy, and multimedia literacies that some call multiliteracies or multiple literacies. New technologies and cultural forms require new skills and competencies and if education is to be relevant to the problems and challenges of contemporary life, it must expand the concept of literacy and develop new curricula and pedagogies. In the new information - communication technology environment, traditional print literacy takes on increasing importance in the computer-mediated cyber world as one needs to critically scrutinise and scroll huge amounts of information, putting new emphasis on developing reading and writing abilities. For example, Internet discussion groups, chat rooms, e-mail, social networking sites, and various forums require writing skills in which a new emphasis on the importance of clarity and precision is emerging as communications increase.

What does computer literacy involve?

Computer literacy involves learning how to use computers, access information and educational material, use e-mail and list-serves, and construct websites. Computer literacy comprises the accessing and processing of various sorts of information increasing in the so-called information society. It includes learning to find sources of information ranging from traditional sites like libraries and print media to new Internet websites and search engines. Computer and information literacy involves learning where information is found, how to access it, and how to organise, interpret, and evaluate the information that one needs. One development in the current technological revolution is that library materials and information are accessible from the entire world. Computer and information literacies also involve learning how to read hypertexts, traverse the ever-changing fields of cyber culture, and how to participate in a digital and interactive multimedia culture that covers work, education, politics, culture, and everyday life. Genuine computer literacy involves not just technical knowledge and skills, but refined reading, writing, research, and communicating abilities that involve expanded capacities for critically accessing, analysing, interpreting, processing, and storing both print-based and multimedia material.

In a new information / entertainment society, immersed in revolutionised multimedia technology, knowledge and information come not only in the form of print and words, but through images, sounds, and multimedia material as well. Computer literacy thus involves the ability to discover and access information and greater abilities to read, to scan texts and computer data bases and websites, and to access information and images in a variety of forms, ranging from graphics, to visual images, to audio and video materials and to good old print media. Computer literacy also involves technical abilities concerning the development of basic typing skills, mastering computer programmes, accessing information, and using computer technologies for a variety of purposes ranging from verbal communication to artistic expression and to various forms of debate.

Learning activities using technology

The Smart Classroom learning activities; PowerPoint presentation; Teacherstudent e-mail communications; Web pages in course delivery and learning activities: topic outlines, learning outcomes, assessment methods, exam results, and examples of the course material; Technology has revolutionised attitudes to librarianship. The neologism (a new word or expression, or a new meaning for an existing word) infopreneurs has been used to describe the professional profile of the librarians of tomorrow.

References:

Smith, Claire & Graeme K. Ward (eds). 2000. Indigenous Cultures in an Interconnected World. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. McLuhan, Marshall. 1962. The Gutenberg Galaxy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Moahi, Kgomotso H. 2007. Globalization, knowledge economy and the implication for indigenous knowledge. International Review of Information Ethics, 7: 1-8. Da Silva Rodrigues, Antonio. 2009. Retrieved from: uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/10500/02chapter2.pdf.