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The conference will be of interest to educators, administrators, students, and community members who value the importance of integrating technology into the curriculum to improve instruction, learning, and business. Online learning involves various skills on the part of the instructor and learner. These include social and communication skills, social networking, independent learning strategies, critical and higher order thinking skills, creativity, and effective online and face-to-face facilitation. In addition, there are many challenges that educators, administrators, students, businesses, and community members face. The theme of the conference is, connecting online for instruction and learning that goes beyond the classroom. Presenters from around the globe will discuss the following topics: Connecting online to improve instruction and learning: Online learning and pedagogical/instructional experiences Experiences with the use of technology in face-to-face and online classes. What worked and what didn't work for you? How do you use technology to promote your online workshops, consultation, business, and communities? Research conducted on e-learning Books written on e-learning 21st Century learning and teaching Challenges of the 21st Century learning/teaching environment Leading a business with e-learning technology

For teachers and trainers to fulfil their instructional role most effectively, their teaching methods must be grounded in educational learning theory. Understanding the learning process is a key element of educational learning theory and provides a framework for teachers and trainers to plan, create and deliver effective lessons, and assess each student's learning. In this free online education course, you will be introduced to the learning process. The course begins by differentiating between teaching and learning, and by describing teachers' and trainers' perspectives on learning. The course provides details about two major learning theories: behaviourism and constructivism. Within the section on Behaviourism, operant conditioning and its implications for teaching are examined in detail. The section on Constructivism compares and contrasts two subtypes of constructivism: psychological constructivism and social constructivism. Finally, the implications of constructivism for teaching are discussed using two practical strategies. This free online education course will be of great interest to professionals in the education sector who would like a greater knowledge and understanding of the learning process that will enhance their teaching and training, and to all students who are interested in the process of how we learn. Introduction to the Learning Process for Teachers and Trainers is originally from and published by Global Text Project and has a duration of 2-3 Hours for the average learner.

This special report features a series of columns by Dr. Lawrence C. Ragan, Director of Instructional Design and Development for Penn State's World Campus, and will help you establish online instructor best practices and performance expectations. The following snippets are just a taste of the insider's advice found in the full report: Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #1 Show Up and Teach - The necessity of this statement is borne of the misimpression that the online class "teaches itself." Since most of the course is already authored and designed for online delivery, instructors may believe they simply need to serve as the proverbial "guide on the side" as the students navigate the learning system. Not true! Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #2 Practice Proactive Course Management Strategies - The online instructor can help create a successful learning experience by practicing proactive course management strategies such as monitoring assignment submissions, and communicating and reminding students of missed and/or upcoming deadlines. Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #3 Establish Patterns of Course Activities - Although the online classroom environment provides tremendous flexibility of time and place of study, establishing and communicating a course pace and pattern of work can aid both instructor and student, and alleviate confusion around how the course operates. Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #4 Plan for the Unplanned - For those small or not-so-small occasions when "life happens," having a strategy for informing students of these changes can go a long way to maintaining course continuity. Principles of Effective Online Teaching: #5 Response Requested and Expected - Timely instructor feedback is essential for the online learner to manage their learning experience. Instructors are expected to respond to student inquiries within one business day.

Course Objective You may know about Moodle, Blackboard, Blogging, using Wikis, Edmodo, Canvas, or other learning or course management systems and how to add content and perhaps evaluate and grade students, but how do you facilitate online courses? Join the workshop to get tips and tricks on how to optimize your work as a facilitator of an online course. Free for teachers who wish to teach or are teaching online. Course Description Teachers will learn about online facilitation and how to turn online students into active learners. Participants will focus on best practices and learn a few tricks and tips on how to facilitate online classes and courses.Who should EnrollThe course is for current and future teachers who wish to teach blended or fully online classes.

The future success of e-learning depends on appropriate selection of tools and services. This symposium will propose that the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) as an institutional tool is dead, no more, defunct, expired. The first panel member, Steve Wheeler, will argue that many VLEs are not fit for purpose, and masquerade as solutions for the management of online learning. Some are little more than glorified e-mail systems. They will argue that VLEs provide a negative experience for learners. The second member of the panel, Graham Attwell, believes that the VLE is dead and that the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is the solution to the needs of diverse learners. PLEs provide opportunities for learners, offering users the ability to develop their own spaces in which to reflect on their learning. The third panel member, James Clay, however, believes that the VLE is not yet dead as a concept, but can be the starting point of a journey for many learners. Creating an online environment involving multiple tools that provides for an enhanced experience for learners can involve a VLE as a hub or centre. The fourth panel member, Nick Sharratt, argues for the concept of the institutional VLE as essentially sound. VLEs provide a stable, reliable, self-contained and safe environment in which all teaching and learning activities can be conducted. It provides the best environment for the variety of learners within institutions.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are online learning events that can take place synchronously and asynchronously for months. Participants assemble to hear, see, and participate in backchannel communication during live lectures. They read the same texts at the same time, according to a calendar. Learning takes place through self-organized networks of participants, and is almost completely decentralized: individuals and groups create blogs or wikis around their own interpretations of the texts and lectures, and comment on each other's work; each individual and group publicises their RSS feed, which are automatically aggregated by a special (freely available) tool, gRSShopper. Every day, an email goes out to all participants, aggregating activity streams from all the blogs and wikis that engage that week's material. MOOCs are a practical application of a learning theory known as "connectivism" that situates learning in the networks of connections made between individuals and between texts.

About this MoodleMeet  The focus of this moodlemeet is investigating what current research offers teachers and others to develop effective online courses. Among the topics we will discuss are: defining what quality comprises in (K12) online learning what are students' expectations of online learning what can teachers do to with moodle tools to promote quality in their virtual classrooms The discussions are aimed primarily at course developer/teachers; however, there are a number of practices that DL administrators ought to be doing to support their teachers and promote instructional leadership.

The First Steps into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education massive open online course (mooc) will run from 21 May to 22 June 2012. This mooc is developed by the HEA/JISC funded OpenLine Project at Oxford Brookes University. First Steps into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, is targeted at new lecturers, people entering higher education teaching from other sectors and postgraduate students who teach. We also welcome experienced lecturers to update and share their knowledge and expertise. The First Steps course is an element of the Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development's (OCSLD) HEA accredited Post Graduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education (PCTHE).

"12 Days of Twitter is a convenient and free way to learn to tweet on Twitter itself. Our friendly team - including people who learnt Twitter on 12 Days of Twitter themselves - will teach you how to reap the rewards whilst avoiding the risks of social media.  It will take just half an hour a day over 12 days, with live support, online chat and guidance throughout - although you may want to spend more time to get the full benefit for a current project or cause. You'll learn the mechanics of Twitter itself, as well as the tools, techniques and tactics to get it working for you and your goals - whether you're in business, using social media to learn or to teach, or trying to change the world with a hashtag."

"LEARN ANYTHING WITH YOUR PEERS. IT'S ONLINE AND TOTALLY FREE. At P2PU, people work together to learn a particular topic by completing tasks, assessing individual and group work, and providing constructive feedback. ."

Personal Learning Networks, or PLNs, have been around for a long time. Originally they were your family, relatives and friends, or probably other educators and fellow teachers you work with in the same institution, but now and thanks to the development of web technologies and wireless connections, the concept of PLNs has been expanded to engulf people you have never met before in real world. Much of the learning nowadays takes place online and via a network of interconnected relations.

This free online course will help you switch to Excel 2010 from a previous version of the software, and will give you a thorough knowledge and understanding of Excel and its applications if you have never used it before. You can use Excel to analyse data, for example, in accounts, budgets, billing and many other areas. You learn how to navigate this revised version of Excel, exploring the menu bar and the different tasks that can be done with it. You will work on sample spreadsheets doing basic math, adding and deleting columns and rows, and preparing the worksheet for printing. You will learn how to represent your data visually to show trends, patterns and comparisons between the data in a chart, table or other template, and how Excel 2010 will automatically do all the calculations for you once you add in the formula. This course will be of great interest to all professionals in business, finance and many other areas that need to analyse data in accounts, or keep records of stock or schedules, and to anyone trying to keep track of their personal finances at home. Excel and spreadsheet use has found its way into daily life that few of us would ever have imaged just a few years ago. If you have done previous ALISON courses such as our Microsoft Excel 2003 course or ABC-IT, our comprehensive free introductory computer course, you will find MS Excel 2010 is the perfect next step to bring your spreadsheet skills to the next level.

Google Search is the most widely used search engine on the Web and processes several hundred million search queries every day. However, there is a level of sophistication to Google Search that most people don't know about and therefore don't use. Using the advanced search features on Google Search would greatly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the search process for all users. This free online course will demonstrate both the advanced features now available on Google Search and give practical examples of how to use them. This course will give you a clearer understanding of how Google Search works, why word order matters, how to read the Search Engine Results page, how to remove invasive results, and how to use WHOIS and look for other site information. You will also get a clear knowledge and understanding of how to use features such as conversions, the calculator, search-by-image, and translation services. You will see examples of how combining these techniques together will give you much more effective search results in a faster time. This course will be of great interest to all users who use Google Search in a professional capacity as they will learn how to input more specific search queries and obtain more relevant search results in a faster time, and to individuals who want to learn tips and techniques about improving their search process.

Apple iPhones are one of the most popular smart phones on the market today. Thousands of iPhone apps are available for download and every day millions of people across the world download these apps. This free online course is a series of video lectures that bring you through the process of iPhone app development. The course introduces you to the Objective-C programming language and how it is used to program iPhone apps. You will learn about the features of the Mac OS X such as the Core OS level, Core Services level, Media level and Cocoa Touch level. You will also learn about programming for single touch and multi-touch functionality and how to develop iPhone apps that use the built-in accelerometer. This course will be of great interest to professionals who develop applications for mobile phones and the iPhone in particular, and to students who want greater knowledge and understanding about iPhone app development. Many people make a lot of money from developing high quality apps for the iPhone. Study this course and you could perhaps join this elite group!

"Special education addresses the individual differences and requirements of students with special educational needs. As a teacher or trainer, working with students with special educational needs requires specific skills and strategies to create and deliver effective programs of work for them. This free online education course serves as an introduction to the field of special education. The course begins by outlining core elements of special education, including the change in educational legalisation in recent years with particular emphasis on legislation in America. The responsibilities of teachers and trainers are also detailed, along with the individual educational plan (IEP). The course describes the most frequent disabilities encountered in the mainstream classroom: learning disabilities, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), intellectual disabilities, behavioural disorders, and physical disabilities and sensory impairments. The course provides key information about each of these disabilities and describes practical strategies on how to assist and teach students with these disabilities. This free online education course will be of great interest to professionals in the education sector who would like a greater knowledge and understanding of working with students with special educational needs, and to all students who are interested in special education."

There's a whole galaxy of terminology that you should know about when it comes to education technology. From PLNs to Blended Learning to Synchronous Online Learning… it can get overwhelming.

The "flipped classroom" was being discussed in social lounges, in conference sessions, on the exhibit floor, on the hashtag and even at dinner. People wanted to know what it was, what it wasn't, how it's done and why it works. Others wanted to sing its praises and often included a vignette about how it works in their classroom and how it transformed learning for their students. Still others railed that the model is nothing transformative at all and that it still emphasizes sage-on-the-stage direct instruction rather than student-centered learning. I engaged in a few of these discussions offline and online, and while I'm still on the fence about my feelings toward the model, I can offer some insight and interpretation."

This free conference is being held online, in multiple time zones, over the course of five days. It is being held in conjunction with Connected Educator Month, and will include an all-day virtual unconference (SocialEdCon online!) as well as a special educational start-up "pitchfire" event. To be kept informed of the latest conference news and updates, please (join the Classroom 2.0 network. You do not need to join this network to attend, but doing so will also allow you to correspond with the presenters and other members, and to comment on sessions and discussions.