In this unit we will study the national policies on ICT in Education and ask you to design, modify and/or implement classroom practices that support these policies. To be able to do this, we need to be able to answer these questions: 'Do you currently understand why the Department of Education has identified the use of ICT as an important component of our teaching?' and 'What are the challenges of using ICT in our teaching?

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use is increasing all over the world. ICTs make our lives easier and can be used as tools to teach, learn, communicate and to store and retrieve information. ICTs greatly increase the possibilities of what can be taught and how it can be taught. Because of this, it is important to understand how to use ICT to your advantage in the classroom. In this unit you will learn about the different types of ICTs such as smartphones, laptops and desktop computers and how best to make use of them in your teaching.

Today’s learners use a variety of technologies to access knowledge resources and interact globally with people. These interactions create a digital society that affords learners opportunities for education, entertainment and social interaction. Consequently, teachers should consider harnessing this know-how to create learning experiences that advance the curriculum objectives and respond to the directives of the national policy studied in Unit 1.

In this unit we will evaluate pedagogical approaches to using ICT in such a way that it supports the attainment of curriculum objectives.

Knowing how technology works is important, however, it is even more important that you feel equipped and confident enough to use technology to enhance your teaching and the learner experience. This unit will refresh the knowledge that you gained in the face to face workshop and also help you to create some useful documents that you can use in your classroom.

This unit will give you the opportunity to learn how to use MS Word in order to edit an existing document and how to print a document once you have completed it. Throughout this lesson you will be challenged to think about ways in which you can encourage your learners to use MS Word in their classroom activities and homework assignments.

With increasing access to television, the internet and movies, learners have become increasingly more visual.
As teachers, instead of trying to continue using only traditional ‘chalk and talk’ methods, there is a need to meet our learners' need for visual stimulation, never at the expense of good sound teaching/pedagogy but rather to enhance the information that we are sharing with them.
This unit will guide you through using presentation software to help you enhance your current teaching methods and materials. For the purposes of this unit we will be using Microsoft PowerPoint as an example of presentation software.

This is a practical unit of study where the individual will need to come up with some ideas on how a PowerPoint presentation can be used by learners who have never use it before.

In this tutorial we will use a spreadsheet package, MS Excel, to generate a class mark book to track student test performance throughout the year. The mark book should also calculate class average per test and derive a symbol per student based on their final year mark. Access the instructions below by working through the pages in sequence. Have both the tutorial and your spreadsheet program open and recreate the steps yourself. Once you have experienced the power of a spreadsheet program you will never keep a paper version again. Let’s get started.

In your orientation workshop your facilitator will show you how to use your laptop issued by the Gauteng Department of Education. This unit is intended to help you review what you have already learned. In addition there is short section that will get you thinking about how you can use your laptop to enhance your teaching and learning

Before completing this unit you will have been provided with face-to-face training on using the laptop provided to you by the Gauteng Department of Education. This unit will revise the basic icons that can be found on the bottom toolbar of your laptop.

Before completing this unit you will have been provided with face-to-face training on using the laptop provided to you by the Gauteng Department of Education. This unit will provide you with a quick overview on where you can locate the lesson plans and teaching resources that have been pre-loaded onto your laptop.

You already have SMART Board installed at your school and now you must learn how to use SMART Board. In this part of the self-study guide you will learn how to download SMART Notebook software and understand the basic features of the software.

Now that you have covered the basics of how to use the SMART Notebook you will now have an opportunity to work with the SMART Notebook side tabs.

Many of our classrooms now have an Interactive Whiteboard and our laptops have collaborative learning software installed on them. Are you using your Interactive Whiteboard effectively? Is it living up to your expectations? In this unit we will have a look at how to get more out of this technology.

Welcome to unit 16. In this unit, we are going to look at a couple of really creative ways in which you can use your SMART board or laptop to improve the learning that happens in your classroom.
By the end of this unit you will be able to:

List at least 3 creative ways to use your SMART board to improve the learning in your classroom.
Describe something that you can do with your learners using your SMART board.

Computers and other ICTs (Information Communication Technologies) can be very useful tools, however, sometimes they can develop problems that make them difficult to use. This unit will take you through the basic steps that you can undertake to find and solve simple software and hardware problems on your device.

Do you sometimes feel that your teaching materials are old fashioned or out-dated? Are you able to stimulate the interest of learners who have access to videos, graphics and interesting articles online? This unit will guide you through the process of enhancing your existing teaching materials by finding good quality resources online.

You should already be able to use the internet and search engines to find high quality resources that can supplement your current teaching materials. As you are searching for resources you may be wondering, am I allowed to copy or share this resource? Can I change or adapt it to better suit what I am trying to do?

This unit will take you through a special type of resource called Open Education Resources (OER) which are available for teachers to use, share and adapt as they need to. You will learn where you can search for these types of resources and to be aware of the different types of licenses that may apply to these kinds of resources.

Electronic Mail (e-mail) is a way of communicating with people by sending messages via an internet mail service to their mailbox. As a way of communicating it is fast, simple, and reliable. Because of this, knowing what e-mail is and how it can be used is a very important skill that can be used in the classroom and in daily life.

This unit introduces you to what e-mail is and teaches you about how it can be used in the classroom to support learning and teaching activities.

In this lesson we will study some simple methods to locate subject related teaching and learning resources. To be able to do this we will introduce advanced internet search skills, particularly Google Advanced Search