Schoology+Reflection

There are many benefits to educators knowing how to design and implement online learning. I think the greatest benefit by far is that “students can ‘attend’ a course at **anytime, from anywhere**. This means that parents can attend to their children, then sit down to class; working students can attend classes no matter what their work schedule might be, folks that travel for business or pleasure can attend class from anywhere in the world that has internet access” (Coleman). Online learning also allows educators and students to have current access to technology through research and communication with other students. Knowing how to design online learning will make educators that much more proficient in the 21st century skills needed to reach our students. The course that I designed will be used to train teachers in my district on the basic features of Outlook. I am working with my department to create an eCourse that will be required of every staff member to complete this upcoming school year. The online portion of this course is just the first of four sections. The idea of the lessons/courses is to increase proficiency levels of the teachers. We have found from observations, trainings, and surveys that many of our teachers lack the basic skills needed to effectively teach in a 1:1 environment. Our hope is to continue to provide more online courses for our district in order to accommodate the varied lifestyles as well as learning styles. I will definitely be integrating online learning in my role as a staff developer. This weekend as a matter of fact we are holding a Technology Integration Academy for 5th/6th Grade Teachers. This training will be delivered through Moodle. We are holding approximately five trainings throughout the summer. This is the first class that we have conducted this way. I’m very excited to see how it turns out. It won’t be entirely online since the teachers will be coming to the training but they will get to experience Moodle (online course delivery) as a teacher and a student. Hopefully the teachers will want to create a similar content delivery for their own classes. I still wonder how I am going to be able to deliver this message to my district about the importance of online learning. I know that some teachers will embrace this without any problems but others will put up a good fight. I think there are many obstacles with this type of learning in the school districts due to the fact that not all students have internet access so I can see these classes being optional or only delivered during school hours. You also have to wonder how much of the class is being done independently and not as a collaborative effort with someone else in the course. I also think that student motivation is critical in this type of learning and that is a challenge all together. Now that I have had some experience creating an online course with Schoology I will take this information back to my coworkers and see if there is a way that we can implement it in our trainings. Currently we use Moodle and I’m pretty sure that we will continue to use it but we can possibly look at Schoology as well. I have definitely learned the importance of online learning and the emphasis that I need to place on it when conducting my trainings. I’d love to get more teachers in my district on board with this type of instructional delivery. Coleman, S. (n.d.). Benefits of Online Learning | Education Guidance | WorldWideLearn.com. //Online Degree Programs from Online Colleges & Universities | WorldWideLearn.com//. Retrieved May 13, 2010, from []