Multicultural African conference Zaria Conference

From left to right Umar Muhammad and Umaru Garba

Participants at the Multicultural African Conference

The potential benefits of ICT in increasing access, equity, quality, and scope of teaching and learning experiences have, for long, been advocated by scholars. This understanding has also influenced government policy to the extent that the provision of ICT-based resource in schools has increasingly featured as a necessary component of public expenditure on education at both the federal and state levels in Nigeria. The utilization of ICT tools in Colleges of Education (COEs) becomes imperative given that the prospective teachers they produce will operate in school systems and with students that are increasingly influenced by global trends in information explosion. But like most educational innovations, the use of ICT in schools should satisfy the key demands of availability and accessibility to all who demand it, effective utilization, and, above all, integration into all facets of curricular and pedagogical practices. It is in the light of this that this study undertook  an evaluation of ICT use in the four COE's in Kebbi, Sokoto, and Zamfara states using the three criteria of technology adoption outlined above. The study used the cross-sectional survey design since it aims at a description and evaluation of existing characteristics of a large population of respondents in these colleges by concurrently studying different samples drawn from that population. Data were collected using questionnaires administered on lectures and computer laboratory technicians in these COE, and analyzed using percentages and means. The major finding of the study is that ICT presence in these schools is still peripheral due to lack of access to internet connectivity. It was therefore recommended that the schools should expand their ICT capability, the students be given proper orientation and training on the uses and benefits of ICT and that ICT integration must begin from the teacher training curriculum of the institutions.