Impact of Information Technology Skills on Old and New Generation Secretarial Teachers in Nigeria Colleges of Education to Utilize Internet for Classroom Delivery

Abstract

This study established the difference between the old generation and new generationsecretarial Teachers in Nigerian Colleges of Education and their ability to utilizeInformation Technology skills to access information from the internet for classroomdelivery. 250 Secretarial Teachers drawn from 58 Accredited Nigerian Colleges ofEducation responded to the questionnaire that was divided into 4 parts. Thequestionnaire was used to obtained information on the respondents’ Bio-data andcomputer use background, Teacher Information Technology Skill AcquisitionCompetence (TITSC), Teacher Information Technology Skills Usage (TITSU), TeacherInformation Technology Internet Knowledge (TITIK), and The extent of usage ofInternet information to teach the Secretarial courses. Data were analyzed using descriptivestatistics and Student t-test at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that there was nosignificant difference between the Old and New generation Secretarial Teachers in theutilization of their IT skills to access information from the Internet for classroom delivery.The result also revealed that there was a gap between the old and the new generationSecretarial teachers. The new were more proficient in the use of IT than the old becausethey were products of the revised Nigerian Certificate of Education (2002) which wasenriched with Information Technology learning materials. Although there were some basicIT skills needed that were lacking in both the old and new generation Secretarial Teachers,hence were handicapped in their ability to download and upload quality information andteach students how to do that. Owing to the lack of these IT skills therefore, the teacherswere not capable in accessing Internet by using some Information Technology facilities toget vital information for effective classroom delivery. it was therefore recommended that,Secretarial Teachers in Colleges of Education should avail themselves with the opportunityof staff development programme of their respective institutions or through selfsponsorship to learn and acquire those IT skills they are lacking, because the more theInformation Technology skills they possess, the greater their ability to use Internet foreffective classroom delivery.