The internet is full of websites, tools and resources for teachers. This article will point you to some of the best online educational resources for teachers who are looking to save time when they are creating resources, lesson presentations or simply searching for new ideas.
Here are a couple of good resources for educators.
The Focus of Educational Technology: Putting Students First
The biggest benefit of LMS platforms and e-learning opportunities is that teachers are able to focus their energies on pedagogical functionality. The ability of teachers to automate marking, digitally issue tests, and track student progress with reporting tools and analytics makes the education landscape a more accommodating and innovative industry that puts students first.
Online learning isn’t just capable of empowering students to progress beyond the course expectations, it also encourages them to explore and learn ahead of the curriculum in a way that makes learning functional, relevant to today’s growing inclusion of technology, and fun.
Free Courses for Online Teachers
TeachOnline: Michigan State University’s Virtual University Design and Technology website offers text-based lessons in topics including pedagogy and best practices, online course content, enlivening techniques, course structure and design, and hybrid courses.
Learning to Teach Online Video & PDF Lessons: The Learning to Teach Online project has been developed by COFA Online, an academic unit at the College of Fine Arts, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. It is designed to be practical and easy to access for time-poor teachers. The video- and PDF-based episodes each examine specific successful online teaching strategies from many different disciplines, offering tips, guidance and pointing out the potential pitfalls to both novice and experienced online teachers. Best of all, the more than 50 lessons can be accessed for free through ITunes.
Thinking About Putting Your Class Online?
This University of Pittsburgh videocast discusses online course planning and design, interaction, giving students feedback, assessment, getting feedback from students, and new technologies.
Promising Practices in Online Teaching
Originally developed for Texas Woman’s University, this course includes modules showing how to design a course, along with explanations of best practices for distance education.
Visual Design for Online Course Content
Also from Texas Woman’s University, this course gives tips to help you successfully create the navigation, layout, colors and design of your course content.
This step-by-step video resource shows teachers how to use technological tools such as Blackboard, wikis, online surveys, podcasting and more.
Effective Online Teaching – Faculty Quick Tips
Seven Pace University online instructors give their best advice about being an effective online educator. Go to iTunes U’s Pace University page and select “Faculty Contributions” to access these videos.
MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching)
MERLOT provides a large, peer-reviewed collection of online curricula and other resources, as well as forums and publications aimed at online educators. Search the MERLOT database for “distance learning” to find links to material to help you plan and design effective online classes.
Free Textbooks for Online Courses – Community Colleges Online
The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (OER) is a great site that assists faculty who are developing online courses for community or junior colleges in finding and utilizing free online textbooks, learning modules, and creative commons resources for distance learning courses.
Sloan Consortium Effective Practices
The Sloan Consortium studies and funds online education. The consortium’s Effective Practices site is a way for online educators to share techniques, strategies, and practices in online education that have worked for them. Practices are peer-reviewed before being put on the site.
Teaching for Home Learning by National STEM Learning Centre on FutureLearn
FutureLearn provides over 140 free online teaching courses. One of these is the Teaching for Home Learning series that has two courses, one for primary Science and the second for Secondary Science. Each course occurs over two weeks with an estimated commitment time of three hours per week.
This series of online teaching courses were designed to help teachers adapt to online teaching in light of the Coronavirus pandemic. This course will walk teachers through the role that teachers and parents play in remote learning, as well as some pointers for conducting Science classes for students remotely.
Moving forward, teachers should ideally adopt blended learning in their teaching. In other words, this course does not merely cater to remote learning. It also aims to complement face-to-face lessons with online components.
Teacher Training Videos by Russell Stannard
We understand that some teachers may not have the time to commit to full-length online modules to upgrade their teaching skills. Fortunately, Russell Stannard produces short videos to help teachers pick up the skills necessary to teach online. These videos range from five minutes to twenty-five minutes and are perfect for teachers with limited time to spare.
Stannard imparts technical skills with tutorial videos for Zoom, Google Docs, Moodle, and other online teaching platforms. Teachers who require more help on the technical aspects of online teaching should find Stannard’s videos informative and engaging.
Please watch this video below for an introduction to Stannard’s online teaching training videos:https://www.youtube.com/embed/a12GApnRRjU?feature=oembed
BENEFITS
1. Individual Pace
Online learning solutions provide much-needed effectiveness for teachers, allowing them to maximize the potential for individual learning curves and styles within the classroom. Many online learning solutions account for self-paced learning and allow students and teachers to work together to meet scheduled targets.
2. Application of Theory
Now more than ever, children, youth, and students are accessing information and news online, communicating, sharing, and exchanging ideas and concepts via technology. Online learning enables teachers to tap into this realm of constant learning by embracing the real-world application of theory through multimedia, video, chat, and interactivity. Educators can effectively harness the power of everyday technology to bring educational theories into the classroom.
3. Practicality
In modern times of global economic and political instability, federal and provincial/state education budgets are often placed on the chopping block. Online learning is an incredible way to compensate for reduced access to teaching information and time dedicated to tracking student progress. The practical benefits to teachers can be measured in terms of time-based efforts and workload reduction. For example, using an LMS allows teachers to quickly create tests and quizzes using a preexisting or ever-expanding question bank. LMS technology also permits the automation of marking those tests and quizzes. Practical benefits also include the ability to track the submission of digital assignments, and reuse or reconstruct a course curriculum using new course templates.
4. The Way of the Future
Online learning offers significant benefits for educators. It’s estimated that by 2019, at least 50% of all post-secondary courses will be delivered online, providing schedule flexibility and cost-effectiveness for educators, as well as access to new learning platforms and the opportunity to learn from celebrated educators located elsewhere in the world via long-distance education. In elementary school settings, blended approaches to online learning allow both teachers and students to access a wide variety of modern teaching/learning tools and resources.
5. Access to Training
Good teachers love to teach; but further, the best educators enjoy the opportunity to learn on a constant basis. Teaching with e-learning resources as a means of updating and honing one’s approach to teaching forces teachers to constantly up their game, in turn making professional development a daily activity.
Conclusion
School has reopened for several months, but with the end of the term, most families are crazy. The atmosphere in most preschools is growing tenser day by day. Some parents are trying to see how they can get the kids into good preschools. These preschools are not easy to get into because of the high demand. There is a lot of competition with other parents who are also seeking the same preschools. It won’t be very easy for you but here are some ways that can help you get your kids into good preschools