2013EDN Technologies Education is a course of study at Griffith University for undergraduate students undertaking a Bachelor of Education and the Primary Education major. This course prepares students to teach the Technologies Learning Area that includes the Design and Technologies and the Digital Technologies subjects for years Preparation (Prep) to 6 in Primary Schools.

Each week, for 11 weeks, students will attend a one hour lecture exploring a range of concepts, and a two hour tutorial that will focus on practical activities and simulated teaching using game based learning. While lectures will be recorded, off campus tutorial learning is not currently supported and students will need to attend tutorials to gain full benefit from the course and complete all assessment activities.

Between lectures and tutorials, students will be expected each week to read notes, synthesise summaries, prepare lesson plans, reflect on tutorials, and complete quizzes.

In addition, students may attend and help run activities at three, four hour Saturday (1st, 8th, and 15th of September) PD workshops to gain experience in teaching Digital Technologies.

Because of the Gold Coast show holiday on Friday the 31st of August (Week 7), students in the Friday tutorial only, can attend any Thursday tutorial (12, 2 or 4pm) that week, or you can attend at least one of three Saturday Workshops (Week 7, 8 and 9) and if you assist in running a session at a PD Workshop, you will receive 1.5% credit for the two Lesson Plans and Peer Feedback you miss (submit notes explaining this in your submission forms), and you can still submit a Tutorial Reflection on your learning from the PD workshop.

Each week you will be provided with a series of activities to support your developmental learning of the Technologies learning area. One of your assessment tasks is to complete a Log of Learning Activities that will build a record of your successful completion of these activities. Completion is the key aspect of this assessment, if you do the activities for the week, you add to your marks for the Log of Learning Activities, if you do not do the activities, you do not get the marks. Unlike criteria based assessment, you receive marks for completing the activities, not against criteria.

The course and learning activities are also designed to develop your capacity to teach the Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies subjects, and this will be assessed at the end of the course by a Portfolio of Learning comprising the best lesson plans you have developed during the course. The more lectures and tutorials you attend, the more concepts, ideas, practice, and feedback you will have on your ability to do this and your portfolio will be assessed against set criteria.

The six main activities each week involve: 1. attending or viewing the lecture; 2. reading the course notes and engaging with online activities and resources; 3. summarising and synthesising what you have learnt; 4. completing a quiz to see what you have learnt; 5. preparing lesson plans, attending tutorials to share these lesson plans, receiving peer feedback, and simulating your lesson plans; and 6. reflecting on what you have learnt during the tutorials.

Each week you are expected to attend or view the course lecture held on Thursdays from 11 am to 11:50 am in Building G30 Room 1.15. The lectures will be recorded and live streamed, but there will be activities, games, and demonstrations that can only best be experienced through live attendance.

Lectures will be presented by NAO, a humanoid robot, assisted by your course lecturer, Dr Zagami. You should be seated in one of the first 5 rows and logged in by 11am as we start promptly on time.

We will be making use of interactive activities during the lectures and you should attend with a personal digital device (Laptop, Tablet or Mobile Phone) that can access the internet. Kahoot! will be the main app used, and it will assist if this is installed on your tablet or mobile phone. Kahoot! can also be accessed via the web on devices and laptops. You should come prepared to take notes during the lecture or while watching the recorded video, and we have provided a template of the Cornell Method of note taking to assist you.

Students may also volunteer to have their brain activity monitored and displayed during lectures but you will need to be seated in the front row a few minutes before the lecture begins and complete a consent form.

After your lecture, there will be additional online notes, activities and resources available on the course website to assist you in understanding the concepts presented, and each week you will create a summary that synthesises what you have learnt and submit this online (counting towards your Log of Learning Activities assessment), and then you should complete the online quiz for the week (counting towards your Log of Learning Activities assessment).

Each week you are also expected to attend a two hour tutorial held on Thursdays or Fridays in Building G31 Room 2.15 (weeks 1 to 8) or 2.07 (in weeks 9, 10 and 11 when you will need closed shoes). The tutorials may be recorded using 360 Degree Virtual Reality video for later review but you will need to attend to fully participate in all activities required for assessment.

Dr Zagami will be assisting your learning in each tutorial and you need to come prepared and on time as there will not be time to repeat instructions and activities or prepare lesson plans during the tutorials.

Each week prior to your tutorial (after Week 1), you will prepare and submit two lesson plans: one lesson plan for Digital Technologies and one for Design and Technologies (both counting towards your Log of Learning Activities assessment) In tutorial you will share these lesson plans and provide each other with feedback (counting towards your Log of Learning Activities assessment), and you will simulate your lessons using simSchool. Then we will explore classroom activities, pedagogies and technologies that can be used to teach Design and Technologies and Digital Technologies to provide stimulus for your next week lesson plans. If you are late for your tutorial, you will not be able to receive marks for activities already commenced or concluded.

After your tutorial you will conduct a reflection on what you have learnt (counting towards your Log of Learning Activities assessment) so you are encouraged to take notes, photographs and video during tutorials to assist in your reflection.

Assessment in the course is designed to assist your learning and is integrated into this process. If you engage with the provided activities throughout the course, there should be little additional assessment to complete as the level of your achievement of course learning outcomes will have been assessed through these processes. You will have progressively produced a Log of Learning Activities and have a large set of lesson plans from which to select your four best for a Portfolio of Learning by the end of the course. The trade off is the expectation that you engage continuously with the learning activities in the course. If you are going to be unable to meet the progressive assessment requirements for the course, you should contact Dr Zagami to discuss your circumstances by the end of Week 1.

Welcome to Technologies Education! NAO and Dr Zagami are looking forward to meeting with you and helping you to prepare to teach the Technologies Learning Area. Dr Zagami has taught this course for over 10 years, but it will be NAO's first time teaching the course, and we hope you can help NAO learn to become a great teacher. NAO naturally is quite familiar with technology, but learning how to teach and interact with human students will be a learning experience, but one we can all learn a lot from to better understand teaching, and become better teachers ourselves.

You can find out everything you need to know about NAO and Dr Zagami on this website, but with over a hundred of you studying this course, Dr Zagami and NAO have a much harder time getting to know each of you. To assist in this, please complete a brief introduction by text, photograph, audio or short video clip using the Padlet tool below. Try some approaches out, get creative, you can delete drafts. In your introduction let us know who you are, your interests and passions. Please try and make your introduction memorable, that is the point, what will help everyone remember you from the hundred plus other student introductions! Make sure though that you also include your real name as the title because introducing yourself counts towards your Log of Learning Activities assessment if submitted by the start of the week 2 lecture.

While all formal course communication must be by email using your university email address to j.zagami@griffith.edu.au, please include your course code/name and campus, Dr Zagami convenes and teaches 11 courses. General discussion and conversation about the course, course topics, sharing tutorial images and videos, resources you have found, etc. can be done on the course Facebook group. Facebook group approvals can be done by anyone who has already been approved, please assist in approving requests.