Welcome to week four, Technology opportunities of our remote ICT in Primary Education. My name is Ivan, and I will be your instructor for this week. No surprise, time is quickly passing by. In this week we are already entering the second half of the course. And it is only three years since our research team, that is UNESCO Institute for Information, Technology and Education Research Team, met for the first time in Pantin, France for the kick off meeting. In this three years, some new members joined the team and, at present, we are proud to share with you, what our main findings are, and what we have learned from our sample schools. By the way, 36 schools located in 19 countries around the world. Let me briefly recapitulate what we have been doing so far. What we have discussed and thought about so far. Go off the week one off to think about the reason for using ICT in the primary education settings, and also understand the different stages of technological and pedagogical sophistication of a school and it's teachers. In week two we tries to identified different dimensions of change in a school level. Due to integrating Digital Technologies and also due to man other reasons, and also study many opportunities and needs for continuous Professional Development of teachers. In Week three, we focussed on peragogical changes achievable through digital technologies. And also, different ways how to harness their value for the learners. And one more short and general recap, of the whole course. We want to learn how to develop, improve and share various strategies for ICT-based teaching and learning, and we are deeply interested in enhancing primary students' learning, using digital technologies. So, what are we going to do this week? First, we will cover the issue of choosing and using technology. We will concentrate on one very important aspect. Which technology is developmentally appropriate for primary students. What are good options to choose from, and which criteria should be applied? And, how much technology do we really need? Then reveal move our attention to the original content, and think about how to choose it, and how to provide it to schools. Very important and interesting point in this context is, should teachers develop their own content? And do they, or do they let the students do that? And if so then why? Next section of this week is highly topical and relevant. It is so-called computational thinking, computing, and educational programming at primary level., Is it possible, and appropriate? Then we will ask you about your future plans in the context of choosing and getting new technology, and new digital content. And we will ask a group of highly experienced primary teachers from our sample schools, about their opinions and about their experience. Similar to the previous weeks, we find your active involvement vital to the whole course. We hope you will have many opportunities to learn from others participants, and give all others good chance to learn from you. We belong to different cultures and religions. We may have different priorities and we live in different situations. But, while we want to learn to respect all sorts of differences, we want you to get inspired by others and inspire them as well. So, we will ask you to read and watch and listen, we will ask you to continuously take notes to your Course Journal. And also share your opinions, post them, ask questions, vote, and most of all discuss. We will provide you with seminal extracts from our research reports, which resulted from the ICT and primary education project. But also from our previous UNESCO project named, Recognizing the Potential of ICT in Primary Childhood Education. We will together with you create new resources of the shared opinions, and experiences of the participants. And we believe this will produce unprecedented rich collection of authentic materials. We will also recommend several other valuable sources of excellent materials, like DIITE website itself, and also, websites of ISTE. The International Society for Technology and Education, Microsoft partners e-Learning e-Twinning and several more which will be presented in the first volume of our outcomes. We hope we'll be able to create good opportunities for you to learn, communicate and think about the many aspects of the whole process of integrating ICT into the primary education settings. We know there are many different factors to be taken into consideration, when formulating your future plans, however we will find this week successful. If you spend some time asking yourself some of these questions. What do my students need or what else do my student's need? How much technology do we need to better meet our learning goals? Do we have the content our students need? Do we use it, and deliver it, properly? Do we create opportunities for our students to develop all-important skills? What have I learned from others? What have I shared with them during this week? So, work hard, learn a lot, and enjoy the week.
