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Kia ora and welcome to the assessment community. You will find information about all aspects of assessment, including research and readings, online workshops, new assessment tools and resources. There are also links to other organisations. You will also find the resource Consider the Evidence - Evidence-driven decision making for secondary schools on this page. This resource is designed to assist schools review their use of data and other evidence.

"Last post topic was use of iPad in Classroom, iPad tutorials and goals for our iPad project in six Finnish upper secondary schools. There are lots of great examples of iPad use in school. In this post i present some fantastic iPad resources for teachers. "

"Pearson, the world's leading learning company, and the Eminata Group, Canada's largest provider of independent, post-secondary education, today announced that students at institutions under the Eminata umbrella will receive all of their course content via the Apple iPad. The agreement is the largest postsecondary institutional initiative for iPad-based eTextbooks in North America."

The Canada Year Book 2008, now online, is a fabulous reference on Canada's society and economy, written in accessible, plain language. Its articles, which include links to charts and tables, describe the latest trends in 31 current topics, including population, children and youth, families, energy, government, health, as well as ethnic diversity and immigration. The Canada Year Book is popular with secondary students and a useful reference for teachers of intermediate grades.

"Project K-Nect is designed to create a supplemental resource for secondary at-risk students to focus on increasing their math skills through a common and popular technology - mobile smartphones."

"The arts have always had a secondary place in K-12 learning. If you doubt that statement, think of the first programs to go whenever budget cuts are implemented - music, fine arts and even physical fitness which includes dance. I've yet to hear of a school board or administrators discussing the way cutting math programs could help the school's bottom line. There is a hierarchy of academics in America, and arts education tends to fall pretty low on the totem pole."

"According to BESA's 2013 report, 57% of Primary and 75% of Secondary schools plan on implementing a one-device-per-child strategy in the next few years. In most cases that will mean tablets and, again in most cases, that will mean iPads. It's not unrealistic to estimate that for a 1000 pupil school, taking into account infrastructure, the total cost of such a project will approach £500,000. With so many investing so much in this approach, what do we know about how to make it work well?"

"I am in the process of collating all my notes together to put onto this blog as well as a Multi-Touch book for iBooks. Whilst that that is a working process take a read of my top 5 key notes for a successful 1:1 roll out. I've done  a number different roll outs now both small and large scale, primary and secondary and each time I have been taking notes on the implementations, reflecting on how I would do things differently if I were to do it again. Below are my key notes (no Apple pun intended there) on what I believe makes a successful roll out."

" As the first phase of bringing closure to these blog posts on literacy at the secondary level, I want to offer a tentative list of recommendations that I believe follow from all the research cited in the previous posts. I will say more about each principle in follow-up posts, as well as offering brief bibliographic and graphic-organizer resources in support of each idea. (I offer some initial thoughts on Principle #1, below)."

"iOS for iPad has dramatically improved multitasking with Spit View dual-pane apps and its counterpart, Slide Over. The Slide Over feature lets you quickly reference, use, and access secondary apps on the iPad without having to enter into full fledged split screen app mode, and without having to switch apps. This feature is great for quickly replying to an email, message, checking Twitter, making a note, or doing quick tasks in another app where you don't want to lose the primary app focus on an iPad."

"This guide aims to help develop a shared understanding of the teaching of computational thinking in schools. It presents a conceptual framework of computational thinking, describes pedagogic approaches for teaching and offers guides for assessment. It is complementary to the two CAS guides published in November 2013 (Primary) and June 2014 (Secondary) in supporting the implementation of the new National Curriculum and embraces the CAS Barefoot and CAS QuickStart Computing descriptions of computational thinking. Computational thinking lies at the heart of the computing curriculum but it also supports learning and thinking in other areas of the curriculum."

"Makerspace is a rapidly growing trend in schools across the country, but to be honest, I've never implemented one myself, and I can't quite picture the logistics of orchestrating a Makerspace. How do kids know what to do? How can you find out what they're learning? How do you make time for that with all the other tasks crammed into the school day? And how do you keep the Makerspace from turning into a chaotic mess? I wanted to get answers to these questions from teachers who have extensive Makerspace experience, and not just at the secondary level. So, I invited Cheryl Nelson and Wendy Goldfein of Get Caught Engineering to share how they've managed Makerspaces in their own classrooms and helped other elementary and middle school teachers get started, too. Thank you, Cheryl, for sharing your experiences below! "

"To help educators enhance their knowledge and "in-demand" skills so they can integrate their learning into classrooms, ICTC would like to introduce a new initiative called CyberEd, a National Cyber Security Awareness & Training Initiative. This initiative has been made possible in part by a grant from the Cisco Networking Academy, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation. A part of this initiative, 130 educators in middle and secondary schools will have the opportunity to receive training in Cisco's Introduction to Cyber Security and/or Cyber Security Essentials courses at no cost, with resources included to help them integrate cyber security into student learning. Additionally, 8-10 educators will have the opportunity to receive training in CCNA 1 & 2 at no cost who are interested in deepening their studies. These professional development opportunities will take place virtually. The courses will be facilitated/led by an instructor, while some elements of the course material will also be self-directed. All courses will be delivered in English at this time."