Preparing pre-service teachers to teach with ICTs

This paper describes a course designed to provide ICT skills to our future classroom teachers as it has been transformed from a purely technical, skills-based design to a format offering students a solid grounding in effective pedagogical approaches and learning design. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for teaching and learning are continually changing and being replaced by the newest “must have” technologies, so how valuable are skills-based technology courses in the long-term to pre-service teachers? Whilst providing incidental ICT training, the emphasis has been shifted to require students to become familiar with the literature to justify their use of technological tools, work collaboratively, critically evaluate their peers' work and reflect on the success of their own. The primary aim of this course now is to create learning designers who are intelligent and adaptive users of technology.