The Distance Between Us is Not Very Far

This presentation is for the e-teaching community. It's one 'bricks and mortar' teacher's ideas about how Web 2.0 tools can be better integrated into online courses to reach out to online students and make learning more engaging. I'm currently a student in an online Master's program myself which I feel this gives me a unique perspective on e-learning from both sides of the computer screen.

In my school district in Canada, the online division is the fastest growing branch with some 5,000 students being handled in secondary alone. Unfortunately, however, where I live teachers in e-learning and traditional schools don’t often collaborate. As I see it, we have different but parallel struggles: traditional classroom teachers want to integrate more technology; whereas, e-learning people are trying to make their material more personal. I think these issues can be best approached if we open a dialogue to see how we can help each other.

I will begin with a look at my own school -- a learning center where at-risk high school students are provided with individualized learning packages -- and with the story of how beginning to use Web 2.0 tools and resources has revitalized my own career. The rest of the time will be spent demonstrating as many interesting tools as I can 'cram in', some of which will be drawn from the collection that my teaching partner and I are now using to provide students with:
(a) alternative methods for doing familiar tasks
(b) unique approaches to practising difficult skills
(c) project-based, multimedia initiatives though which they can stretch and apply their skills
(d) interesting ways to review and reinforce concepts. Although the examples are mainly from secondary science social studies, and math, the tools all have broad applications across all curricular areas and grade levels.

A great follow- up to this session would be Give a Lesson a Makeover, Friday at 13:15 - 14:15 [http://acec2010.info/proposal/804/give-lesson-makeover-web-20-style].

This is how you cite this paper:

All delegates attending this session must bring and ensure:

To get to know me a little before the session, I invite you to take a look at 2 Voicethreads:
~ one which introduces me briefly [http://voicethread.com/share/787247/]
~ and the other which will give you the flavour of the workshop [http://voicethread.com/share/892777/]

You may also want to peruse my tools wiki [http://small-changes-big-returns.wikispaces.com/].