Summary of ICT Policies and Issues: Implication to Teaching and Learning

 Definition of ICT Policy 

ICT Policies are needed to put a roadmap or course of actions to be pursued and adopted by various governmens,organizations,entities involving ICT. These include principles and guidelines in the use of ICT which cover three main areas: telecommunications (telephone), broadcasting(radio and television) and Internet.  

    The New ICT Technologies 
  1. Information Technology-includes the use of computers,which has become indispensable in modern societies to process data and save time and effort.
2. Telecommunication technologies-include telephones (with fax) and the broadcasting of radio and television often through satellites.
 3. Networking technologies-the best known of networking technologies is Internet, but has extended to mobile phone technology , Voice Over Internet Protocol(VOIP) satellite communications and other forms of communications are still in their infancy.    

The DICT Roadmap 

  In our country,the Department of Information and Communication Technology (DICT) has formulated a roadmap to guide all agencies in the utilization, regulation and enhancement of ICT. Each project has corresponding policy statements and guidelines.
   The ICT for Education (ICT4E) is a program under the DICT that supports all the efforts of the education sector in incorporating the use of ICT as well as in determining and gaining access to the infrastructure (hardware,software,telecommunications facilities and others) which are necessary to use and deploy learning technologies at all levels of education .

Among the policy recommended programs that have applications to education teaching-learning are:
 1.ICT in Education Masterplan for all levels,including a National Roadmap for Faculty Development in ICT in Education. A National Framework Plan for ICTs in Basic Education was developed.
  2.Content and application development through the Open Content in Education Initiative(OCEI) which converts DepEd materials into Interactive multi-media content,develop applications used in schools,and conduct students and teachers competitions to promote the development of education-related web content.
  3.PheDNET,is a "walled" garden that hosts educational learning and teaching materials and applications for use by Filipino students,their parents and teachers. All public high schools will be part of this network with only DepEd-approved multi-media applications,materials and mirrored internet sites accessible from school's PC's. 
 4.Established Community eLearning Centers called eSkwela for out-of-school youth(OSY) providing them with ICT-enhanced alternative education opportunities.
 5.eQuality Program for tertiary education through partnerships with state universities and colleges (SUCs) to improve quality of IT education and the use of ICT in education in the country,particularly outside of Metro Manila.
6.Digital Media Arts Program which builds-digital media skills for government using Open Source technologies.Particular beneficiary agencies include the Philippine Information Agency and the other government media organization,the Cultural Center of the Philippines,National Commission for Culture and Arts and other government art agencies, State Universities and Colleges and local government units. 7.ICT skills strategic plan which develops an inter-agency approach to identifying strategic and policy and program recommendations to address ICT skills demand-supply type. 
All the seven programs were guided by the roadmap that embeds policy statements that relate to education specifically in the enhancement of human development for teaching and learning.

 Some Issues on ICT and Internet Policy and Regulations
 Global Issues
  Access and Civil Liberties are two sets or issues in ICT Policy which are crucial to the modern society. The other concern is civil liberties which refer to to human rights and freedom. These include freedom of expression, the right to pivacy, the right to communicate and intellectual property rights.          Issue No.1: Freedom of Expression and Censorship   Under international human rights conventions, all people are guaranteed the rights for free expression. However, with the shift from communicating through letter,newspapers and public meetings to electronic communications and on-line networking a need to look into how these new means modifies the understanding of freedom of expression and censorship.  Some examples are the following:
 1. Individuals rights are given up in order to have access to electronic networks.
  2. Censorship restricts the transmission of information by blocking it or filtering the information.
  3. Defamation actions may be used to silence critics. This action deters the freedom of expression. 

  Issue No.2: Privacy and Security 
Privacy policies are an issue. Most commercial sites have a privacy policy. When someone uses a site and clicks “I agree” button, it is as if you have turned over private information to any authority that may access it. 
1.For most,privacy means “personal privacy” the right of individuals not to have their home,private life or pesonal life interfered with. 
 2. Privacy of communication refers to the protection from interference with communication over the phone or internet.
 3. Information privacy is related to the use of computers and communications systems which are able to hold and process information about large numbers of people at a high speed.

   Issue No.3: Surveillance and Data Retention
The use of electronic communications has enhance the development of indirect surveillance.In the indirect surveillance,threre is no direct contact between the agent and the subject of surveillance but evidence of activities can be traced. The new and powerful form of indirect surveilance is dataveillance. Dataveillance is the use of personal information to monitor a person`s activties whle data retention is the storage and use of information from communication systems.   There is very little that can be done to prevent surveillance. What can be done is to change the methods of working to make surveillance difficult. This is called “counter surveillance” or “information security” if it refers to computers and electronic communication.

  Issue No.4: E-Pollutants from E-waste
Large amount of e-waste is generated by ICT. These are in particular,terminal equipments usedor computing(PC's,laptops), broadcasting(television and radiosets),telephony(fixed and mobile phones),  and peripherals (fax machines, printers and scanners). The accumulated e-waste is due to rapid turnover of equipment due to rapid improvement of software. While material waste can be destroyed by crushing,toxic material brought about by the different equipment requires utmost management.

 Implications to Teaching and Learning

   For the Teachers and Teaching
1. Guide the teachers on what they should teach that relate to ICT, and how to teach it.
 2. Technology should never replace any human teacher.The tools are support instructional materials for the teachers which are available for use.
  3. There are rules and regulations that govern the use of technology. Caution should be observed to protect individual privacy.
 4. All the issues and many more shall be part of the teaching content as each teacher will be encourage to use technology in teaching.

 Reflection 
 The ICT technologies plays a huge part in our education nowadays. It helps us to do our task in fastest and easy ways. And of course, technologies improve the teaching skills of our professor's which is very useful for us students because, it becomes easy to understand the lesson that we tackle with the help of the technologies as a platform of our professor's and of our fellow students when we're having our reports.

 Application
   I can apply this topic in my future career as a teacher by being aware about the policies on how to used technologies. I can also share this to my learner's on how to use properly the te technologies.