Teaching Online Courses: Strategies and Resources
Tools: My average day consists of going into my blended learning school and working mostly
from my cubicle, with a dash of classroom time thrown in there. Blended learning online schools are programs that primarily teach students online, but include a face-to-face component. The majority of teaching that I do is done on the Internet, but I meet with students to work one-on-one and help them with their assignments and course management. Typically, I log into my Learning Management System from my computer and email, grade, have discussions and create lessons right from my desk.
What’s a Learning Management System? A learning management system (LMS) is a
software program for administering your courses. Have you ever heard of Moodle? Well, Moodle (
http://moodle.org/) is an open source program that allows you to operate your courses at an online site in which students log into in order to complete their work and contact their instructor. Blackboard (
http://www.blackboard.com/) is another very popular LMS, especially in college and state K12 online programs.
Within your courses, you can use any number of tools that are of interest to you. One of
the best parts about teaching online is the ability to try those tools that you haven’t been able to use in your brick and mortar program because of district or school filtering, or a lack of computer access, or the fact that online tools scare many administrators. I am able to find new tools through my Personal Learning Network (PLN) and then include them into lessons as an optional way for a student to complete an assessment. For example, I recently discovered Vocaroo (
http://vocaroo.com/), which is an audio recording site, so when I wrote a lesson that included a short essay as the culminating task, I gave students the option to record an audio or photo essay (using Flickr) instead of just a written one.
One of the problems that you run into with utilizing interesting Web 2.0 or social media tools in an online course, is that students will have technical problems and nobody to support them. About 4 years ago, I started implementing Web 2.0 tools and requiring students to pick from a list to complete an assignment. They would just skip over that assignment because they couldn’t figure out the tool and the teacher wasn’t there then to show them. So, students have to learn two things on their own, the tools and the content, in order to complete something and that can limit their success. Now I just give them alternatives to the norm. If
you don’t want to do a written essay you can use Vocaroo or Flickr or record a Vlog (video
blog), or instead of PowerPoint you can use VoiceThread or Prezi (
http://prezi.com/), or any number of other fun tools.
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