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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 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

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.

Today, if you don't show up in Google, you don't exist. Whether you are applying for a new job, being considered for a board position or trying to get a date, you can count on being Googled. So knowing what Google says about you and proactively managing your personal brand online is critical to success. Our Online ID Calculator‚™ is the first and leading tool that will help you make sense of your Google results and give you advice on how to build a stellar online identity that's aligned with your real-world personal brand.

"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."

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 free online computer skills course is a highly-demanded compilation of Web-based training for five Microsoft Office 2010 software products including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Outlook. This is a perfect course to do as an individual seeking to increase one's desk-based productivity. It also makes an excellent new employee induction training programme, or can be used as a required course for up-skilling your organisation's current staff. For those who happily use older versions of Microsoft Office, particularly 2003 and 2007 versions, the new feature sets of Microsoft Office 2010 will be a revelation. You will get an excellent return on your time and energy by updating your Office productivity skills via this free online course. For those who have completed ABC IT, our comprehensive introductory computer course, the Microsoft Office 2010 course is the perfect next step as a means of getting your Microsoft Office skills up-to-date."

It just plain makes sense that students who dig incorporating technology into their academic pursuits would likely make mobile computing via tablets and smartphones an integral life component. Taking advantage of everything these applications have to offer streamlines the largely autonomous process behind enrolling in an online course. Some, of course, prove a little more useful than others, but the following offer a nice enough start!

It's time for SimpleK12's Online Education Conference - a 24 hour Training Extravaganza!  An international conference that's 100% FREE!  No travel.   No registration fees.  We're camping out in the SimpleK12 offices (bunny slippers on, coffee in hand) for 24 hours straight to bring you the best-of-the-best conference sessions with presenters from around the world. We may be crazy… but we're crazy for online professional development!   Won't you join us?  Come to one session, or come to them all (we dare you!).  

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.

"Our students' excessive dependence on digital content is going wild and this obligates us from an ethical point of view ( at least ) to be ourselves aware of the copyright issues related to the use, dissemination, and redistribution of such content and also to teach our kids and students about the guidelines they have to respect when using electronic materials. The "Whatever online is Free" mentality should change and students need to constantly be reminded of the ethical codes and copyright rules they have to abide by to use the online content in an ethically sound manner."

"Welcome to the world of Diigo, one of the leading Top 10 research tools. Diigo is a cloud based information management system that helps you organize relevant facts you find online. With Diigo you can keep track of those favorite websites and revisit them from any computer at any time. Diigo is a great way to improve your online productivity and is widely used by educators."

sharing online platforms: Mindset, Newsela, Edmodo, Moodle

If you are a South African educator and would like to know more about technology integration by participating in short free online courses from SchoolNet, please think about joining our next two courses on offer for April and May.

Lucid Chart is an online platform for creating powerful diagrams and flowcharts that can be used for creating presentations and for visual communication with your audience. It has a free and a number of paid packages that provide rich features for creating mockups, wireframes, importing MS Visio files, mind mapping, etc. Lucid Chart also provides online collaboration options so that you can conveniently interact with others users when creating your diagrams. Moreover, you can later use these diagrams and charts in PowerPoint .PPT files to enhance the presentations.

This list brings together what I think are this year's best ways to create online content easily and quickly. These web tools are excellent ways for English Language Learners, and others who might not be very tech-savvy, to have a good experience working with technology.

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.

Gone are the days when  teachers would rely only on traditional gradebooks to record both their teaching progress and their students achievements. Now, technology has made it easier for teachers to create and access their gradebooks online and from anywhere with internet connection. Educational Technology and Mobile Learning has compiled a set of awesome tools that you can use for grading, managing your courses and student information, taking attendance, and even sharing with parents their kids grades. Check out the list below and share it with your colleagues.

"Whether you're studying online or at a traditional college, there's no question that school is expensive.  But not everything has to cost an arm and a leg.  There are plenty of free distance education resources out there for cash-strapped students-if you know where to look.  Here are 135 free ways to enhance your education online. Free Classes Many of these schools and sites offer a large number of free courses and courseware.  These links to individual classes represent only a small sampling of what they have to offer, and the sites are worth exploring further."