Abstract:

The MODERN project aims to help you teach more effectively through incorporating new digital learning tools into your day to day teaching delivery. It is expected MODERN will be a key resource in teacher and trainers´ professional development. It has been identified, assessed and categorised the latest and best digital learning tools. This is a project with a website that has actually had real educators looking at and rating every tool. Want to find the best tools for creating courses? Done! Want to find the best tool for testing students? Done! Want to find the best tools for project work? Done! In fact, the unique 10 category classification system makes it easy for anyone to find the best tool for the learning objective that anyone wants to achieve.

By engaging with the project anyone:
a) Will learn intuitive powerful tools for engaging students.
b) Understand the pedagogic potential of digital learning tools.
c) Motivated to incorporate some of these new tools into your teaching practice.
d) Increase own digital literacy.

MODERN aims to increase the ability and motivation of teachers, trainers and lecturers to use digital learning resources as a means to more effective, relevant teaching, thereby causing a positive impact in students, learners and trainees.

The project hoped to achieve the above goals by:
a) Providing educators with a convenient and highly usable set of innovative tools which they can use to engage their students on mobile devices.
b) Offering clear guidelines on which tool offers the best solutions to achieving pedagogical objectives.
c) Presenting project toolkit in a highly attractive manner and user friendly format.

First output is the Audit of Learning Tools. In this report it has been identified, assessed and categorised the latest and best digital learning tools. Since there are endless lists of learning tools out there this project has actually had real educators looking at and rating every tool. Since it is a subjective assessment the option was to have the task led and undertaken by a capable and known university. Together with the assessment a ten category classification system was created.

The second output is the Pedagogic Assessment of the considered as top twenty-five tools. Again the project has categorised the tools in with the ten category classification system. This report presents a more detailed analysis of the pedagogic potential of the tools that were considered most useful. Each assessment is no more than three pages long and provides all the essential information needed to decide if this is a tool that might be useful in a teaching or training activity.

The Toolkit is the third output. It is an online platform designed to teach and train about the top twenty-five. It follows a four step process: read the pedagogic report, watch the introductory video, view some examples of the impact of the tool in real life learning environments and then learn the tool itself. It is hoped to encourage anyone interested to try one or two of the tools initially, to gauge the impact and then to learn some more tools.

The fourth output is an Online Training Course to help anyone learn some of these new and innovative teaching digital techniques. It has five modules:
a) Introduction to innovative teaching.
b) The Flipped Classroom teaching model.
c) Collaborative learning spaces and Peer connections.
d) Project based learning.
e) E-learning trends.

Keywords:

Toolkit, digital tools, online course, training, education, teacher support, e-learning quality, assessment.