CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Information Technology (IT) has become part of everyday activities and includes the internet, social networking sites, e-mail, the mobile phone, CD-ROM, DVD, handheld personal devices, and an ever-growing array of new technological inventions. ICTs are powerful tools that can increase access to improved and quality education (Ifijeh, Michael Onuoha, Ilogho and Osinulu, 2015). Institutions of learning and development look to ICT to assist in finding ways to improve students’ learning eectively. This is as a result of the elastic eect it exhibits in improvement eorts around the world, especially in the education sector. ICT has changed the way people communicate, learn, and conduct businesses. It can help in tackling development and learning challenges in many ways. These involves helping information and knowledge to travel faster and farther, assisting information and knowledge distribution on a large scale majorly in the education sector, making provision just-in-time information and knowledge for learning, bringing about revolutionary advances in teaching and learning, significantly reducing learning costs, among others. In the education system, ICTs are being deployed with the aim of aiding students’ academic achievements and employability in the long run.
Enhanced and contemporary education in developing countries such as Nigeria gives the assurance of reasonable employment for graduates, rising towards a knowledge-based economy, and speedy national growth economically (Olson, Codde, deMaagd, Tarkleson, Sinclair, Yook and Egidio, 2011). However, Nigeria as an African country have been noticed to lag behind other developing countries in educational achievement and other areas of the man power development needed in the knowledge-based and global economy. Secondary schools in Nigeria are underperforming (Olson et al., 2011). As a result, there is need for development methods in the adoption of ICT that would improve the development of the education sector in Nigeria. It has been noted that ICT has played a central role in young people’s rise to prominence on a global scale and has helped them mobilize and collaborate. In addition, youths including those in secondary school levels are rising to the challenge by engineering the use of ICT. While the good news is that young people are using ICT to enhance their development as it is in developed countries, the challenge is to inspire them to use it to change their world positively.
According to Ifijeh et al. (2015) aimed that for majority of students, the invention of ICT like the mobile phones, and other smart devices such as digital readers and the internet has greatly improved interpersonal communication and education. It is necessary to draw attention to the truth that the adoption and uses of ICT among secondary school students has done more harms than good. In Nigeria, some of the undesirable side effects of mobile phone use include “Extra cool”- a term coined for the use of mobile phones in the night around 12.30am because the tariff is free or very low; indiscriminate use of phones in public places such as on the highways, in hospitals, while driving, in churches and even in classrooms.