Secondary School Teachers Attitudes Toward Information Technology

Every aspect of human existence has been touched by information technology, and it has the ability to contribute to education and training—especially distance learning—to make it a cutting-edge learning environment. The need for new technology in the teaching and learning process is growing. With sound and unmatched feasibility for information exchange, communication, and discovery to support teaching and learning, the information age evolves into an era of knowledge. Information technologies support opportunities for knowledge exchange on a global scale. These can help by giving teachers and students access to the most recent knowledge and information. According to Haag (1998), information technologies are a "set of tools that can help provide the accurate and appropriate information that is necessary for effective teaching and learning"


INTRODUCTION
In this age of Information dominated by digital technology, which has influenced all aspects of human life, teacher education cannot be an exception.Digital technology has given devices which have the capacity to store ,retrieve and process qualitative information both fast as well as accurately .Such an electronic device is known as Computer.Computers along with development in satellite communication have given birth to Information Technology.
According to UNESCO -Information Technology comprises, -scientific, technological and engineering disciplines and the management techniques used in information handling and with men and machines, and associated social, economic and cultural matters (OEDC ) .It is used to cover Technologies used in the correction, processing and transmission of Information.It includes Micro-Electronics and info-electronics based technologies including computers, telecommunication, industrial robots and electronic components and software products.Sansanwal (2000) defined Information Technology as the use of hardware and software for efficient management of information, i.e. storage, processing, retrieval, communication, diffusion and sharing of Information for social, economic, educational and cultural upliftment.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND TEACHER EDUCATION
Information Technology can promote the opportunities of restructuring the Teaching-Learning process.These can transform teaching and learning by offering alternatives to the teacher provided information, access to virtually unlimited resources and opportunities for real world communication, collaboration and competition.Information Technology facilitates teachers in their teaching process as  Developing awareness-recognizing that something is wrong or different  Present the material in more interesting and attractive way distance.There are various opportunities and barriers to effective communication.An exhaustive review of literature regarding communication barriers to distance education summarizes the technical, psychological, social, cultural, and contextual challenges leading to a significant conclusion: that as technology used for distance education improves so does both the opportunities to overcome many of the barriers to ineffective communication and the complexity of the barriers that are faced by the participants.

NEED OF THE STUDY
As we know the Education is the base and back bone of a nation.The progress of a country wholly depends upon the system of education in that particular country.In our country, the system of teaching is still same as in earlier days i.e. by chalk and talk.Teachers and text books were considered to be the source of knowledge.Even the teachers used to stick to the contents of text books which were infrequently updated and contains many errors.By these traditional methods it will be not easy to bring the economy of a nation on a right track.There should be some changes, changes in teaching methods and classroom environment are required.The use of Information Technology should be included in our Educational system now.The last two decades have witnessed a revolution caused by the rapid development of Information Technology.Information Technology has the potential to remove the barriers that are causing the problems of low rate of education in our country.It can be used as tool to overcome the issue of cost, less number of teachers, and poor quality of education as well as to overcome the time and distance barriers.
From the convincing point of view some benefits of using Information and Technology in Education are - It includes scientific, economic, technological, information and multicultural literacy and global awareness. It promotes inventive thinking. It develops effective communication which leads to teaming, collaboration and interpersonal skills, moreover it induces personal, social and civic responsibility. It leads to high productivity which gives the ability to plan and manage results. It leads to examine the education scenario in present context.So, the investigator felt the need to study whether Secondary School Teachers use Information Technologyin their teaching process or not and its productivity.

MEANING AND DEFINITION OF ATTITUDE
An attitude is a relatively enduring organization of inter-related beliefs that describes, evaluates and advocates action with respect to an object or situation with each belief having cognitive, affective and behavioral components Freeman says -An attitude is a dispositional readiness to respond to certain situations, persons or objectives in a consistent manner which has been learned and have becomes one's typical mode of responses.An attitude has a well defined object of references.‖