Teaching With and Learning Through ICTs in Zimbabwe’s Teacher Education Colleges

The use of ICTs (information and communication technologies) in Zimbabwe’s teacher education colleges is of paramount importance. The teacher trainees have a dual role to play: learning through ICTs and also learning how to teach through them. Interestingly, the rate at which schools have embraced the use of ICTs is unprecedented, but this has not been matched with an equal effort by teacher education colleges and hence teacher trainees have been less exposed and trained in using such technologies. Evidently, this has created a mismatch between the need for teachers who are conversant with ICTs and e-learning and their availability. This paper stems from a pilot programme in which the author was an active participant. It reflects on efforts made to integrate ICTs into the teacher education curriculum and evaluates the impact that this programme will have on teacher education in Zimbabwe.