EDUCATIONAL technology was the focus of last week's Vice-Chancellor's Open Planning Forum where the director of the Multimedia Education Group in the Centre for Higher Education Development, Laura Czerniewicz, focused on the possibilities and options of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for teaching and learning at UCT.

Chairing the session was Deputy Vice-Chancellor Martin Hall who highlighted the importance of the presentation in his introduction. Czerniewicz is working on developing an approach that later may become policy for educational technology at UCT.

The University is currently in the process of examining a number of its own ICTs, which will be improved with mid- to long-term strategies that Prags Naicker, Executive Director of ICTS, is developing.

Czerniewicz said that educational technology was relevant to a residential university such as UCT for several reasons, the most important being that in order to embody the University's principles of offering a world-class tertiary education experience, educational technology would have to be part of the package.

“There is no way in the current global formation that we can offer that kind of educational experience to our students without including educational technology,” she commented.

Czerniewicz added that several of UCT's local competitors had already included educational technology in their academic and staff curricula, and, in order not be left behind, UCT had to be part of this educational revolution.

Czerniewicz went on to explain the possibilities offered by ICTs specifically for teaching and learning. “What education technology does is extend possibilities. There are already a lot of things happening in the classroom, but now so many more things can become possible.”

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