21st Century Skills: A set of generic skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking and innovation that students need to successfully operate in the workplaces and actively participate as citizens in the 21st century.
Action Research: Research done to address an immediate problem usually by a group of individuals working in a team to solve the problem.
Active Learning: A process that engages students in learning by gathering information, thinking, problem-solving, reflection, and self-assessing their degree of understanding.
Application: Computer program or system.
Assessment: The process of collecting information about student learning. It is used to inform teaching and student learning.
Assessment for Learning: Students are assessed during the lesson to ensure that they understand the concepts and that the teacher may proceed to the next concept.
Assessment Literacy: The understanding of the assessment process and all its components (criteria, tools, modalities, etc.). The comprehension of how assessment relates to the learning process and the ability to use this knowledge to implement in-context assessment practices for any specific goal.
Assessment of Learning: Assessment carried out at the end of the lesson to determine student attainment of lesson targets or objectives.
Authentic Assessment: Assessment tasks that resemble the activities and the complexity of the real world. These tasks can demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills and are focused on testing higher-order capabilities.
Awareness: This is the ability to perceive, feel, or be conscious of events, objects, thoughts, emotions, or sensory patterns. In this level of consciousness, an observer can confirm sense data without necessarily implying understanding. More broadly, it is the state or quality of being aware of something.
Classroom Management: Teaching practices that promote order in the classroom and create a conducive atmosphere for both teaching and learning.
Cognitive Functioning: A term referring to a human’s ability to process (thoughts) that should not deplete on a large scale in healthy individuals. Cognition mainly refers to things like memory, the ability to learn new information, speech, and understanding of written materials.
Collaborative Learning: A method of teaching in which students work together to solve a problem, create a project, or explore a topic together.
Community of Practice: A group of people who share a common interest and collaboratively work together to learn more about this common interest.
Constructivist Learning: Learning theory refers to the idea that students construct knowledge through their own experiences.
Cooperative Learning: A form of collaborative learning where students work together in a small group on an activity or assignment that is structured. Individuals are usually held accountable for their work.
Criteria: Indicators of successful performance by which an assessment task will be judged.
Deeper Learning: Learning that focuses on examining critically new facts, procedures, and ideas, connecting these to prior knowledge and personal cognitive structures aimed at making meaning.
Digital Immigrants: Individuals born before 1980; generally presumed to be able to learn to use digital technologies but with less facility, intuition, and preference than members of younger generations.
Digital Natives: Those who were born after 1980, are generally presumed to have a high level of facility in working with digital technologies, and an intuitive understanding and preference for working with such technologies.
Education: The wealth of knowledge acquired by an individual after studying particular subject matters or experiencing life lessons that provide an understanding of something.
Educational assessment: The process of documenting, usually in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs. Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community (class, workshop, or other organized group of learners), the institution, or the educational system as a whole (also known as granularity).
Educational Technologies: A technology that may have been created for other uses that have been adapted for use in an educational setting.
E-Learning: Refers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education.
Engagement: An energetic state of involvement with personally fulfilling activities that enhance one’s sense of professional efficacy.
Evaluation: This is a systematic determination of a subject’s merit, worth, and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards.
Feedback: Information that results from formal or informal assessment and that is used by teachers and students to enhance teaching and learning.
Flipped Classroom: A form of blended learning offering more personalized instruction of learning.
Framework: An organizing structure of interlinked items that supports a particular approach to a specific objective.
Inquiry-Based Learning: Activities for students that promote inquiry rather than absorption of teacher-provided knowledge.
In-Service Teachers: A certified teacher who teaches a K-12 classroom.
Internet Access: The capability of a user to connect to the Internet.
Knowledge-Based Society: It refers to well-educated societies, and who therefore rely on the knowledge of their citizens to drive the innovation, entrepreneurship, and dynamism of that society’s economy.
Learner-Centered Education: A teaching approach that puts the students at the center of learning by actively involving them in the learning process and putting the teacher in the facilitative and mentoring role.
Mentoring: A mutual partnership in which, one member has more experience than the other and it is their responsibility to organize and guide the less experienced member.
Millennials: Members of the generation born between 1981 and 1999.
Mobile app: This is a software application developed specifically for use on small, wireless computing devices, such as smartphones and tablets, rather than desktop or laptop computers.
Pedagogy: The discipline that deals with the theory and practice of education.
Peer-Assessment: A participative assessment modality in which a student or group of students reflect on, give comments about, or evaluate the performance or task of a peer or group of peers. It might also include the grading of the task.
Portfolio: This is a compilation of student work assembled for (1) evaluating coursework quality and academic achievement, (2) creating a lasting archive of academic work products, and (3) determining whether students have met learning standards or academic requirements for courses, grade-level promotion, and graduation.
Pre-service Teachers: These are teachers-candidates who are going through teacher preparation programmes to become certified teachers.
Problem-Based Learning: A student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of solving an open-ended problem found in trigger material. The PBL process does not focus on problem-solving with a defined solution, but it allows for the development of other desirable skills and attributes. This includes knowledge acquisition, enhanced group collaboration, and communication.
Professional Development (PD): A means of supporting people in the workplace to understand more about the environment in which they work, the job they do, and how to do it better. It is an ongoing process throughout our working lives.
Reflective Practice: The capacity to reflect on action so as to engage in a process of continuous learning. A critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively.
Self-assessment: Is the process of looking at oneself in order to assess aspects that are important to one’s identity. It is one of the motives that drive self-evaluation, along with self-verification and self-enhancement.
Self-Directed Learning: Type of learning where the student takes responsibility of and is accountable for their own learning without assistance from an instructor.
Self-Efficacy: The extent or strength of one’s belief in one’s own ability to complete tasks or achieve a goal.
Service-Learning: Faculty uses this pedagogical approach in linking theory learned from the class into practice within the community. It is credit-bearing, linked to course goals, and requires faculty supervision and formal assessment.
Smartphone: Combines standard mobile phone features with advanced features found on personal device assistants (PDAs).
SMS: Stands for “Short Message Service.” SMS is used to send text messages to mobile phones. The messages can typically be up to 160 characters in length, though some services use 5-bit mode, which supports 224 characters.
Social Networking Websites: They allow users to be part of a virtual community. The two most popular sites are currently Facebook and MySpace. These websites provide users with simple tools to create a custom profile with text and pictures.
Software: This is a general term that describes computer programs. Related terms such as software programs, applications, scripts, and instruction sets all fall under the category of computer software. Therefore, installing new programs or applications on your computer is synonymous with installing new software on your computer.
Sustainable Development (SD): Is a process for meeting human development goals such as effective teaching and learning, while sustaining the ability of natural systems to continue to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services upon which the economy and society depend.
Teacher Autonomy: The professional independence of teachers in schools, especially the degree to which they can make autonomous decisions about what they teach to students and how they teach it.
Teacher Education: The policies and procedures designed to equip prospective teachers with the knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, and skills they require to perform their tasks effectively in the classroom, school, and wider community.
Technology Integration: The ability to skilfully combine pedagogy and technology to foster meaningful learning.
Ubiquitous Learning: Learning that takes place anytime, anywhere through the enhancement of technology.