AFRREV VOL 14 (1), S/NO 57, JANUARY, 2020
installed in all secondary schools in Rivers State; adequate number of experts should be
employed to train principals and students in ICT; adequate funds should be provided to
manage the process for adequate educational quality service delivery in schools; government
should set committee to install and monitor ICT facilities and its usage in public schools in
Rivers State.
Key Words: ICT, Administration, ICT access, ICT application, ICT literacy, Principals’
performance.
Introduction
The need to become visible, accessible and relevant to the world has made educational
managers to embrace and incorporate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in
secondary school administration. This is with the aim of improving principals’ administrative
performance with its attendant productivity. Abraham and Chuku (2018) averred that ICT is a
system derived from the intermingling of Information Technology (IT) and Communication
Technology (CT). It could also be defined as the application of electronic media (Computers,
telecommunication gadgets, digital media, mobile devices, Personal Digital Assistants
(PDAs) etc. in the acquisition, processing, storage, retrieving, and dissemination of
Information. Nwaoma in Kalu, Mmereole and Osuocha (2017) opined that ICT, a terminology
for information and communication system is a generic term referring to technology which is
used for collecting, storing, editing and passing on of information in various forms.
Information and Communication Technology in the educational parlance refers to the
technology that is manipulated using electronic devices to transmit data, graphics, symbols,
sounds, videos, messages and pictures to achieve specific and broad educational goals.
Educational stakeholders – society, government, organizations and parents are interested in
getting viable information about pupils’ performance. This expectation informed the need for
appropriate technological platform to adequately communicate, interact or interface with the
students and transmit their progress or challenges to the stakeholders even at the comfort of
homes and offices. This problem is not peculiar to Rivers state alone. In the same vein,
Eguwunyenga in Kalu, Mmereole and Osuocha (2017) further observed that in most public
senior secondary schools in the North-Central of Nigeria, officials still go through the
laborious exercise of manually registering students, maintaining records of pupils’
performance, keeping inventory list of supplies, etc.
One of the common features of the 21st century teaching is that there is a shift from analogue
(usual manual) teaching to a digitally based (technological) teaching. This idea is in
agreement with the proposition of Abraham and Chuku (2018) that the 21st century education
emphasizes a technological-based education that is problem-solving. Modern day teachers
need ICT (information and skills) to professionally balance in the global knowledge wave.
Barawi (2017) propose that information referred to the knowledge obtained from the
processing, manipulation, and transmission of raw data into a meaningful form for decision-
making. Information is paramount in administration processes and therefore, needs to be
communicated.
Communication according to Inegbu (2018) is the passage or transmission of information
from a source to a receiver through a channel. The source of information to students are the
teachers, hence the necessity of being equipped for their task.
Administrators and teachers need to be acquainted with the scientific methods of managing
information due to the multiplicity of educational interest groups and their geographical
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