EDLD+5368

· What benefits do you see in educators knowing how to design and implement online learning? · How will you professionally use your course that you designed? · Will you integrate online learning in your role as a teacher/staff developer? · What questions do you still have about online learning? · What will you do with this new learning? As a district educational technology director I see numerous benefits in educators knowing how to design and implement online learning. One of the areas that I am especially interested in is using online courses to help homebound students. Our district has many students who are receiving instruction at home due to illness or pregnancy. We provide teachers who go to their houses two or three times a week to carry their lessons to them and provide them with assistance. The student’s regular classroom teachers are required to send home whatever work needs to be completed. This is a less than perfect system. The homebound teachers are not comfortable with many of the upper level subjects. I see a tremendous benefit in classroom educators designing and implementing online versions of their classroom courses for their homebound students. The students could access their assignments, view videos, and send messages to their teachers. That would enable their homebound students to stay current with their class and not to feel so left out. As a technology director, I would use the course I designed for professional development and technology training. We all know that teachers are incredibly busy today. It seems like we have a meeting every day. If it isn’t TAKS tutoring, departmental meetings, PLC ’s, ARD’s, various committees, staff meetings, parent conferences, progress reports, TAKS testing, report cards, it’s something else. Who honestly has time to dive somewhere and sit through hours of professional development or technology training? However, most of us are required to attend a certain number of hours of professional development. We probably even have a few technology skills that we would like to learn or improve. If teachers could access online courses over specific topics from their computers, I believe they would be much more willing to participate. I would like to create online courses over a wide variety of technology topics that would increase teachers’ productivity and creativity. Yes, as stated above in my role as a teacher/staff developer I would definitely integrate online learning. I would create stand-alone online modules over specific usages of current educational technology. Teachers would be encouraged to access these online courses to improve their skills and knowledge. My only real questions about online learning deal with the logistics of using it with my classroom students. I am not sure how I could implement it with my classes right now. I couldn’t really require my students to do anything online at home because many of my students don’t have internet access at home. I love the idea of it. One of these days when my district can issue laptop computers to each of our students, I will be able to do amazing things with it.