I was born in the 80’s and raised in the 90’s. During this time the burgeoning of technology began to take shape and has today exploded with a variety of gismos, tools,and apps that leave a tech dinosaur such as myself quite bewildered. This is perhaps the same feeling my students experience, as they have been born in a technological era and are more comfortable navigating a new operating system rather than stepping foot in a library. This therefore brings me to the point that the didactic way of instructing students is no longer relevant and teachers such as myself must embrace the use of these new productivity tools in order to engage the attention of our students. Tools such as Moxtra, Edmodo, Padlet and Powtoon can be utilized in the classroom to deliver lessons as well as to stimulate the creativity of our students. These tools can also be a forum for students to keep abreast of lessons they may have missed , thus offering them another form of communication besides Whatsapp  and Facebook. In conclusion, it is therefore imperative that all stakeholders move from the old method of teaching and embrace these new tools to better facilitate our nation’s youths.

As an educator, you are taught that any lesson or assessment you create must cater to the multiple intelligences of students in a classroom. Therefore, the use technology to teach and evaluate students is a step in the right direction given that we now live in a technological era.

These technological tools, provide a fun and stimulating method of evaluating students rather than the alternative(paper tests and quizzes), which are limited. Instead students can now engage in interactive, colourful games, which cater to a range more multiple intelligences rather than paper tests. Many of these tests also provide real time test scores, which is not only advantageous to students but to teachers as well, who usually must do a juggling act to have papers marked in a timely manner.

Some of the more popular online assessment sites are Quizzes which is extremely interactive and offers many colourful quizzes to choose from or create. Socrative and Kahoots are also both teacher and student friendly with their ability to get real time test results after the test is completed. These electronic assessments also afford students the ability to complete assignments not only at home or school but at any time during their day, as it is easily accessible at their fingertips.

In conclusion these electronic assessments are both advantageous to students and teachers alike as they cater to the varying abilities of students , thus ensuring that a

As an English Language teacher ICT can be used for substitution and augmentation, especially given the inclusion of the School Based Assessment(SBA), to the CSEC syllabus. Students are now being tasked with the responsibility of producing both a hard and soft copy of their SBA portfolio. This is where the implementation of the substitution and augmentation component of the SAMR model is beneficial. Students can now use a Word Document to type and manipulate their SBA presentations. This therefore shows that there is merit in using ICT for substitution and augmentation. Additionally this serves to show that the scope for future ICT use in the classroom is vast and as teachers we must prepare ourselves for this usage. I, for one believe that ICT can be utilized in my teaching by the use of ICT teaching tools such as Edmodo and Sway, which will help to engage the students more and also allows for easier communication between teacher and students. In conclusion it is without doubt that the integration of ICT within each subject area is here to stay and that the merits it brings to the classroom can not be questioned.