Assessment is an essential process that provides information about what learners know and can do. Assessment allows teachers to make recommendations for future learning interventions. Assessment is the ongoing process of gathering, analysing and interpreting, using and reflecting on evidence to make informed and consistent judgements to improve future learning.

In this unit you will learn about the different types of diagnostic assessment tools, when best to make use of them in your teaching and how ICT can benefit them.

The Internet and Internet-enabled technologies continue to develop very fast. This has many benefits, but it changes to the way in which learners learn, communicate and interact.

Learners are keen and avid users of the Internet and mobile technologies. They are seen as ‘digital natives’, always surrounded by technologies. There are many social, educational and economic benefits for learners in using ICTs. Learners need to understand what is acceptable and appropriate behaviour in an online society.

As we have seen, the internet is a very useful tool for the classroom. It gives you access to content such as videos, pictures, and research. It is also a communication tool. But the internet can be dangerous if you are not aware of the threats that exist.

This unit will teach you about internet safety. It is important to know how to be safe on the internet because you need to keep your private information to yourself and make sure that your students are not falling victim to crime on the internet.

Teaching with technology is not always simple, especially if our aim is to improve the quality of the learning that is happening in our classrooms. Because technology is generally pretty expensive and takes quite a bit of effort of organise and care for, it makes sense that we would want to get our money’s worth by making sure that the end product – the quality of learning – is as good as it can be and keeps improving. Otherwise, why bother?

In this unit, we are going to learn about one of the most popular and useful frameworks to help us think about teaching well and effectively with technology. It is called the TPaCK framework. TPaCK is short for Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge.

This unit is part 2 of a 2 part series. In the previous unit, we introduced the TPaCK framework and explored some of its basics. The assignment for the last unit was to play the TPaCK game which should have started to help you think about how you could apply TPaCK to your subject and classroom.

If you have not yet completed Unit 25, you should do so before starting this unit.

In this unit, we will take a much closer look at how to use TPaCK to think about the integration of technology in a number of different subjects as well as how to plan learning activities using the framework.

This unit will encourage you to think of ways in which you can change your teaching style from being mostly teacher- centered (teacher talks and learners listen) to thinking of ways in which you plan your lessons and activities to involve your learners more actively in lessons.

How can you engage your learners in authentic learning that develops their 21st Century skills and that makes space for ICTs to be leveraged to maximum effect? There are many answers to these questions but one important answer is to be found in Project Based Learning (PBL).

This unit is part 1 of a 2 part series on PBL. In this unit, we will cover the basics of what PBL is, what its key components are and why it is such a powerful teaching methodology. In part 2, we will dig into some of the details of how to design a project for your class.

This unit is Part 2 of a 2 part series on project-based learning (PBL). In unit 28 we looked at the basics of PBL and what makes for good and effective PBL. You ended unit 28 by writing the driving question for your own PBL project. If you have not yet completed unit 28, you should complete it before continuing.

So far in this module, we have learnt what learner-centred teaching is and why it is important that we try and teach in learner-centred ways. It is learners, after all, that need to do the learning. Therefore, it is important that we put the learner and their needs at the heart of what we are doing.

In this unit we will have a look at some ways in which technology can support our efforts in putting the learner at the heart of things as well as some general principles for designing great technology enabled learner-centric learning activities.

ICT is useful for all learners, but it is particularly valuable because it can be effectively used by learners with different abilities. This unit will teach you how to use ICT in the classroom to support students with special needs.

In this unit, we will investigate how we can use social networks to help us communicate with our wider school community. `We will be looking at two social networking tools: Facebook and WhatsApp.

In this unit we will have a look at a special type of community, called a Community of Practice (CoP). You will be provided with some ideas of how you can join an established CoP or create your own CoP.

In the same way teachers encourage their learners to be curious about the world, teachers need to regularly update their own knowledge and skills. This unit focuses on how teachers can enjoy lifelong professional development opportunities by linking to teacher networks and online courses.

This is the first unit in this course module on assessment. Therefore, this unit is going to 'set the stage', as it were, for the rest of the module. In this unit, we are going to take a closer look at what the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) say about assessment. Just by their name, one assumes they have some important things to tell us.

We are also going to look at the overall cycle of assessment. Assessment is not a once off event like a test or exam. That test of exam is just a part of the assessment cycle. We will go into more of the details of parts of the assessment cycle in later units.

Assessment is an essential process that provides information about what learners know and can do. In this unit you will learn about suitable summative and formative assessment strategies.

Whether you’re evaluating an assessment, skimming a favourite unit of yours, or using it as a walk-through instrument to get a feel for the level of student thinking in a classroom, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a powerful tool for any educator at any level.

This is the second last unit in this module on assessment. In it, we are going to look at 2 separate, but related, parts of assessment. The first is how to set high quality exams and tests. The second is how to analyse the results of exams and tests to learn more about what your learners are struggling with. This is called error analysis.

Assessment is one of the most important parts of teaching. After all, it is the best way we have of knowing what our learners are learning. It is not necessarily the same as what we are teaching.

Doing assessment well (whether it is formative or summative), requires that we are clear about what we are assessing and what success looks like. If you area assessing a learner’s answer to a Math problem, this is relatively straightforward. What is correct and incorrect and quite clear.

But what if you are assessing a piece of creative writing, or a presentation, or a group project or a piece of art. In these cases, assessment is far more subjective. Rubrics are simple but powerful tools that help us with these kinds of assessment and help us to assess fairly and consistently.

As teachers, we are able to use a variety of ICT tools in our classrooms. Many of us have access to computers, whiteboards, tv, tablets and cellphones. These digital resources can all be used for teaching and learning. But, how do we protect expensive technology but also serve the syllabus requirements in the best way possible? How do we organise digital resources in the classroom so we get the most to support and reinforce learning activities and social interactions?

This unit will look at these issues and policies around them.

In this day and age, virtual communication means that you can contact people in many ways. Modern technology is so amazing that something called “video conferencing” has been invented as a means of communication.

This unit will focus on video conferencing and how it can be used.