CURRENT STATE OF KNOWLEDGE ON THE VALUE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN HEALTH EDUCATION

Information and Communication Technology (ΙΤ&C) is the use of informatics software in the teaching and learning. Health education is the interdisciplinary branch of pedagogy, medico-biological sciences and health sciences, which addresses issues of prevention and the adoption of practices and strategies to reduce morbidity and mortality in the general population. Positive aspects οf ΙΤ&C in health education are: a) ΙΤ&C allows the health educator to present content that it would not otherwise be available in a traditional classroom b) the health educator via ΙΤ&C can make the lesson exciting by invoking the creativity of his/her students c) ΙΤ&C in health education creates the right conditions for cooperation, communication, feedback, knowledge dissemination,and exchange of experiences. Negative aspects οf ΙΤ&C in health education are: a) many sources of information can be incomplete, unreliable, and misleading b) the dependence on computers can reduce the self confi dence and social capability of the students. In this paper we attempt to summarize all the available-to-date information on these issues.