Teacher information

This unit of work has been developed for 1st year pre-service teachers enrolled in the "living and learning with technology" unit. The broad aims of this unit are to give students the opportunity to explore the use of technology in three key ways:

• 1. The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in your personal and professional life - a focus on social uses of technology.

  2. ICT as cognitive tools, exploring how you can facilitate student use of ICT in learning - a focus on pedagogical (teaching-related) uses of technology.

  3. Technology tools that can assist you in your own learning and research at University (and beyond) - a focus on learning and researching using technology.

This website provides a framework for participants to perform an authentic task with real-world relevance. It is ill-defined and participants will identify multiple ways of creating using technologies for social, learning, teaching and research purposes. Identifying suitable contexts and selecting appropriate resources for each tasks will require some thought, effort, time and access to computers with internet connections.

Learning objectives

On successful completion of the unit, learners should be able to:

• 1. Plan and create a personal/professional website

  2. Create and reflect upon a range of educational activities using technology in an online blog

  3. Use a range of software, applications, web-based tools and technologies with confidence

  4. Plan, create,organise and publish information rich learning activities and resources using a range of software and web applications

  5. Access web-based programs and resources as pedagogical tools

  6. Work collaboratively in a group project to produce an educational technology-based resource

  7. Explain ways of using information technologies as cognitive tools in educational settings

To conform with university assessment guidelines the overall learning task has been divided into two smaller tasks. Detailed feedback should be given to students about their performance and how they can improve on aspects covered in task one and two.

The learning context and tasks have been designed to mirror the workplace context and how these skills and knowledge might be applied in a real workplace situation. Task one is designed to be completed individually, however, students will collaborate to conduct the peer review and provide feedback for improving their work. They should also be encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas with their peers via their blogs, forums discussion areas and the Skype chat. Task two is an individual task and task 3 is comprised of two sub-tasks: a) a group project and b) the finalisation of their individual websites.

Most of the content, supports and resources for this course are accessible from this website which is open to the public (an open access environment). Participant enrolments, profiles, assessment details, results and other confidential information are located on the learning management system (Blackboard LMS a closed environment).

Please contact me if you have any suggestions for improving this website or if you have an authentic learning task that you would like to share.