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11 Aug 11 Online Education – Some Useful Tips to Teach Young Kids Through the Internet

Internet has indeed made life way easier with its blissful presence, making learning and personal development easier and convenient. While it is easy for the learner to grab a power-packed lesson, sitting in front of the computer, it may not be easier for the teacher to deliver lessons on the web. What takes to it be a good online teacher is the topic of discussion here. Here are some useful tips.

Do not bombard with information and suffocate the young minds

Do not forget the medium, it is digital in nature not a physical form; here the recipient has much lesser span of attention and retention level. So do not bombard with information and lessons at a go, stretched for hours. An ideal lesson should not necessarily be more than 20 minutes long at a stretch. If the lesson is too long, you can break it into follow up modules and deliver in the next session. This way learners will pay more attention towards your lectures, will be more interested in it and also wait for the follow up sessions.

Make yourself available and approachable throughout

Internet as a medium is challenged by the fact that it lacks physical contact, proximity and its benefits. Don’t let it come between your relationships with your students. If you make yourself available just for the lessons of 20 minutes and disappear for a whole week, unless you are really famous, there are chances students may forget you or choose someone else over you who are more approachable. So do not commit this mistake. Stay in touch with the students, as much as you would have done in classroom situation. Make yourself approachable and available for any information, clarifications or help by sharing personal contact information like your business telephone number, email address and the like. It will help them to feel confidence and faith in you.

Engage them

It’s important to engage your students. You may throw questions and ask them to mail you the replies or ask for feedback. You may start a thread in a forum or any blog, asking your students to participate actively and comment. Or motivate them to make some interesting video on the topic and upload, while others can put their opinions.

Gear up, let the online lesson be really interesting.

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07 Nov 10 Online Education – Is It Worth The Money?

In not so old days, a person needs to enroll him in a classroom should he want to educate himself. Then came postal education services, which enabled people to enrich them without having to join a classroom. This whole idea of distance learning was taken to a new level by the coming of the Internet, and more so, by the coming of broadband (high-speed Internet).

Now all kinds of materials are available — from text to audio to video to interactive and non-interactive presentations to podcasts to workbooks to checklists to cheat sheets, etc. But a fundamental question needs to be answered before you go on with an online education program. Is it worth it?

Is it worth it?

It is worth the money invested, but if you are looking for real-world classroom interaction than you will be a bit disappointed because the nature of interaction here, at best, is virtual. You may exchange text messages, talk on microphones, or see each other on web cams, but you cannot nudge the fellow student or tap on his or her back. This experience you will miss.

Real world or recorded?

It does not matter as long as the content is structured. But my personal favorite is recorded session replayed in presence of the one who has recorded it, so that students can stop him and ask him questions to clear their doubts.

Forum participation

A course that does not invite forum participation is not worth going for because learning is always limited if there is no peer-to-peer interaction among people taking the course.

Study material

Every course comes with a guide book, and so does courses offered on the Internet. Make sure the study material is comprehensive enough, and you must read it to take full advantage of the course.

These are some of the prerequisite of an online course, if a course meets these criteria, then it is worth the money and effort.

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