Within the Australian curriculum, students of all ages quickly develop ICT capabilities as they learn to use ICT effectively and efficiently to create, access and communicate ideas, solve problems and work cooperatively and collaboratively in all their learning areas. Not only does ICT aim to help students’ understanding and success during their schooling careers, but also in everyday life and their futures beyond the classroom. The capability of this involves students in learning to make the most of the technologies available at the time, adapting to newer and improved ways of doing things as the technology advances and limiting the danger and risks to themselves and others involved within the digital environment.

The Melbourne Declaration on the Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA 2008) recognises:

“In a digital age, and with rapid and continuing changes in the ways that people share, use, develop and communicate using ICT, young people need to be highly skilled in its use to participate in a knowledge-based economy and to be empowered within a technologically sophisticated society.”

This is why Assessment using ICT programs has become such a success throughout the Australian curriculum. Assessment using ICT enforces students to operate digital technologies and advance their ICT skills in the classroom environment; providing set goals and targets for students to work towards, allows for the opportunity to be as creative or original as the student decides and the ability to produce this work on engaging and challenging digital programs that helps challenge and expand the mind. This particular way of assessing students of today’s generation is mandatory for such an advance technologically-based society.


Assessment using ICT covers and crosses through most (if not all) learning and teaching areas within the Australian Curriculum. Take Film, Television and New Media for example. Throughout my own high schooling career ICT programs such as Garage Band, Final Cut and Adobe Premier Pro CS5 were all compulsory digital softwares to incorporate within assessment tasks in order to successfully complete each individual project. Mathematics is another great example where mostly pen-to-paper work is carried out throughout the semester but when particular topics emerge, Microsoft Excel (for example) is learnt and used in order to complete set questions.

Information and communication technologies are automated, fast, highly interactive, multimodal and successfully support the rapid representation of knowledge to many audiences around the world. They have begun transforming the ways in which students think, adapt to and learn new things and eventually gives them greater control how, when and what they learn.

I personally believe that assessment using ICT should spread further as technology advances throughout the near future. It is a highly effective tool to help develop student learning and not only assists students in their current academic situations, but also improves skills of which may then be taken further into adulthood and used effectively for future careers.

Bibliography

Integrating ICT in the curriculum [videorecording] / produced by Video Education Australasia.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability. (2013) acara. Retrieved May 24, 2013, from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/Information-and-Communication-Technology-capability/Introduction/Introduction