AVAILABILITY AND UTILIZATION OF MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGIES FOR LITERACY INSTRUCTIONS AND EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION IN AFIKPO, NIGERIA

Abstract

The digital era is having significant impact on all affairs of man in the society. In the education sector, information and multimedia technologies are adopted, applied and used in providing library and information services, facilitating teaching and learning, and assessing students’ academic performance. Literacy instructions and early childhood development education (ECDE) represent key sub-sectors that require strategic attention, which is now championed with multimedia technologies. Multimedia technologies are digital and interactive applications with combinations of voice, graphics, images, video and animations for communicating ideas and sharing information. The use of multimedia technologies has been found to encourage and rekindle the interests of pupils in literacy instructions and ECDE for easy learning and acquisition of knowledge. This necessitated the study that adopted survey research design with checklist and observation used for data collection, involving ten (10) institutions that provide literacy instructions and ECDE purposely selected for the study. Findings revealed that multimedia technologies are inadequate and hardly used in the institutions, except television and stand-alone computers found in some of the schools, but rarely used. Poor electricity supply, high cost of procuring multimedia technologies, low tuition fees were described as key factors affecting availability and use of these technologies in the literacy instructions and ECDE institutions covered. The study recommended that erratic power supply in Afikpo should be addressed, and management of the ECDE institutions should strive to provide the multimedia technologies, considering their impact in literacy and early childhood development.