Tag: online learning

It’s Always About Learning!
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Writing Advice for College Students
By Jeff Wahl
Technology has had a significant impact on education. Expanded subject matter and greater interactivity through online courses, as well as changes in the delivery platform from blended to a fully virtual environment have all transformed the way we educate and prepare students. Yet, regardless of the ways and means – the ultimate outcome remains the quality of the learning experience.
Our experience and developed knowledge base has shown us that what happens in the classroom during the school day is not always enough for some students. To help these students catch up, and leap ahead, their learning experience needs to step outside the boundaries of the traditional classroom.
We have long realized the benefits of personalized one-on-one instruction. We have also come to realize that while the actual location of the learning experience may shift from a classroom in a school building to the living room in a family home – the teacher is still the one to establish a quality learning environment.
Therefore, the following four components of a Teaching and Learning Framework promotes the following best practices to ensure successful outcomes for learners, and should be taken into account as one evaluates a tutoring engagement.
The Foundations of Teaching and Learning: A focus on the well being, development and progress of all learners, and personal and professional conduct. The tutor:
- Demonstrates professionalism in manner, speech and dresses appropriately.
- Attends tutoring hours faithfully and arrives on time or early.
- Works whole sessions, uses time effectively.
- Is polite, patient, attentive and helpful with child.
Assessment for Planning and Learning: Knowledge of prior achievement is used to inform planning, and progress is assessed during the lesson so instruction can be adjusted to suit learner needs. The tutor:
- Assesses student work to determine successful or weak areas.
- Clearly identifies appropriate resources for addressing weaknesses.
- Is able to share data from work sessions that indicate growth.
Strategies for Learning and the Application of Subject Knowledge: Intentional use of strategies lead to progression within the subject and teaching enables learners to understand the concepts that comprise the subject they are studying.
- Strategies are used skillfully to reinforce, refine and extend learning.
- Teaching challenges all learners so that they make adequate and steady progress.
- Strategies used show a desire to help the child become increasingly independent.
Climate and Culture for Learning: A safe and positive learning environment is created to promote confident and purposeful learning, and the learner is engaged in their learning.
- Excellent relationships are developed and evident.
- Learners celebrate their successes.
- The learner looks forward to each lesson.
Not all tutoring is the same. Truly effective tutoring needs to be more than just extra time added onto the school day. It must put an intense focus on foundational skills, complement the school’s regular curriculum, and most importantly engage students to get them excited about learning.
For nearly 20 years, EdisonLearning has partnered with school districts throughout the United States to provide customized extended education services. Our Learning Force tutoring program focuses on reading and math – considered the two most important foundational aspects of learning. Pre- and post-assessments, in combination with the follow up that occurs throughout the program, support the learning model and help teachers monitor student progress toward individual achievement goals.
Throughout, our Framework for Teaching and Learning is utilized to evaluate the quality of the teaching/tutoring, and the learning experience of the student and their achievement matched against intended outcomes. Regardless of the environment – learning and student success remains the ultimate outcome.
Jeff Wahl is the President and CEO of EdisonLearning, a leading international educational solutions provider offering effective solutions to improve student achievement. EdisonLearning currently serves partners with more than 500,000 students in 24 states, the United Kingdom and the Middle East through nearly 300 school partnerships. For more information: www.edisonlearning.com. You can follow Jeff on Twitter at: @JeffWahl1.
My Town Tutors is a website that connects South Shore parents with teachers who tutor. If you are a teacher who tutors, for a limited time, you can register for using promo code: usteachers. Teachers set the hourly and keep 100% of the fees! One of our teachers made $5,000 last year tutoring.

It is FREE for parents to search for a teacher in their area.
March 12, 2013
Connect, Engage and Succeed in Math: HOTmaths & Tutoring

Connect, Engage and Succeed in Math – Why tutoring with HOTmaths can improve your chances of success.
For any parent or student considering or already engaging a tutor for math there are 4 keys to success to consider. HOTmaths (www.hotmaths.com.au) has been designed and built by math teachers to meet the needs of students who learn different things at different times at a different pace and for different reasons. Math is universal, whereas HOTmaths was born Australian – the birthplace of many inventions that we cannot do without today, such as the notepad (yes, the paper one!), the electric drill, plastic spectacle lenses and WiFi . Here are the 4 keys to success and how HOTmaths can help:
1. Build the foundations before the walls

Everything you learn in math is built on what comes before. Any concept that is being taught at any level beyond learning to count requires prior knowledge, understanding and application of prior concepts. This is why any teacher, tutor or student subscribing to HOTmaths has access to all topics, all lessons and all year levels of the site. In every lesson there are links to previous concepts that are needed in order to ensure the best learning outcomes, so students jump immediately to something they need to review or re-study. These links can also be discovered through the HOTmaths dictionary. Student topic and lesson reports show the teacher/tutor where individual students have struggled and allow them to direct remedial work where necessary through the Task Manager application that enables the teacher/tutor to set specific class or homework tasks that target specific student needs.

Fig 1 – links to prior content

Fig 2 – Dictionary showing explanation and links to prior content

Fig 3 – Setting homework tasks

2. Engage, don’t lecture

Technology in education has radically changed how we teach and learn – the new learning environment is flexible, expansive, interconnected and individualized. HOTmaths takes advantage of these new possibilities by providing students with multiple entry points into math content, then allowing them to choose to learn in the way that suits them best. Learning is personalized, varied and vitally, fun.

There are ‘widgets’ (interactive activities and games) that engage visual learners who may struggle with text-based or traditional teacher-led lessons. For kinesthetic learners, those that learn by doing, there is a range of open-ended investigations and problem-solving tasks linking math to the real world and turning theory into tangible, comprehensible ideas. Students who prefer to work logically and methodically, often text-based learners, are supported with walkthrough problems that guide students step by step through the skills needed to complete multi-step tasks. These activities break questions down into single, logical steps that the student can work through at their own pace and level, receiving individualized feedback as they go to reinforce their understanding of the processes.

Regardless of the way students learn or choose to study, their work is instantly marked and their level of understanding diagnosed. In this reflexive and highly individualized learning environment, teachers/tutors can customize a learning path for each individual student to give them the best chance of successful learning.

* *

Fig 4 – Widgets and games engage students’ imagination

Fig 5 – HOTsheet investigations encourage problem solving

Fig 6 – Walkthoughs lead students on a step by step journey of discovery

3. Teach, don’t test

Regardless of how we might feel about standardized testing, we live in a results oriented world, and parents want their children to succeed. Teachers and tutors are expected to prepare students for examinations, testing what they have learned and practicing test-taking conditions and techniques. HOTmaths offers test-generating facilities that teachers/tutors can use to create practice tests and timed conditions. Tests can be customized with ease to focus on specific areas needing practice for whole classes, groups and even individuals. This allows for valuable class time to be spent teaching, not testing. Timed and time-limited tests can be assigned as homework with results immediately available to teachers/tutors in a format that is fully exportable for keeping parents up-to-date with their child’s progress.

Fig 7 – Test generator for creating bespoke, self-marking tests

4. Learn, don’t memorize

Benjamin Franklin once said ‘Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.’ The reason most parents employ a tutor for their child is because a good tutor identifies the individual needs of the student and adapts to her capabilities. As we have seen, HOTmaths provides the tools good teachers and tutors need to personalize lessons, engage student attention and create enthusiasm and interest that involves each student in math so that they learn, not just remember.

Learning and remembering are not the same. Anything remembered can be forgotten. Anything learned is for life. Is it possible to ‘un-learn’ how to ride a bicycle for example? Real learning comes when we take risks. We have to fall off a bicycle before we learn to ride.

The opposite of ‘remember’ is ‘forget’. There is no opposite for learning, nor is there a substitute.

To try HOTmaths free click here. For more information about trialing HOTmaths with a group of students with full access to reporting and assessment tools or for group pricing quotes, click here.
Mark O’Neil is CEO of HOTmaths and passionate about education. He believes that imagination and creativity need to be given a higher priority in schooling and that only a transformation of how children are educated will lead to more children succeeding. Follow him on twitter @moneil365 and @hotmathshq

December 17, 2012
Incorporating Technology into Learning Makes it Easy and Attractive
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With online learning soaring in popularity, the need for academic institutions offering distance learning degrees are also increasing rapidly. Top-class universities around the world seem to be offering a wide array of degrees that offer beneficial results to students all across the world. The advantages of having an online degree are multiple; it saves time of traveling, it is easily accessible, the learnings provided are custom designed and the students get to interact with teachers and fellow students at the same time.
However, it is to be noted that such beneficial aspects of distance learning has come intothe forefront with the flexible learning approach going online. Rapid advancements in technologies, over the past few years have given to the rise of online tutor support to distance learning programs offered by top class foreign universities.
If you seem to be in doubt about the beneficial aspects of incorporating technology in courses then, here are your answers –
Over the past few years, technology has created an omnipresent status in the world of living offering its blissful touch in almost all parts of life and work. With time, many higher educational institutes have already gave into the approach of distance learning.
Embracing technology have become a necessary step for all. However, things are not same for classroom learning. Most schools seem to lag behind when it comes to integrating technology in on-campus learning. What most people fail to realize is that technology, if properly used can help the students acquire skills, which are needed to survive in knowledge based economy driven by technological support.
Integrating technology while conducting learning in classrooms goes beyond the idea of teaching the basics of computer knowledge. Effective and efficient technology integration must occur within the curriculum in a way that would ensure improving the learning process and environment. Designing course modules by the latest computer tools would make the classrooms more happening and more student would be glued to their interactive learning sessions.
Integrating technology in classrooms must always hold its support in four key areas that include group participation, proper interaction, improved feedback, active engagement and enhanced communication. Effective integration of technology is achieved when it becomes a routine and regular practice supporting the curriculum goals effectively. A project learning that is technologically enabled offers a visual support to the learning or knowledge material delivered in class. Learning via projects allows them to integrate a learning empowered by many aspects. Students into the classroom tend to refine their analysis power and enhance the problem solving skills, as they take a leap forward in synthesizing information that have been found online.
The extensive resource of the web world also offers each classroom with diverse, interesting, and present learning materials. Students find an opportunity to connect to the instructors of the university at ease while, understanding the content through sounds, texts, and images.
New tools and technology that helps in modeling and visualizing also allows the students to experiment with different phenomena and view results via visually supported images leading towards better understanding. Additionally, the support of technology into the online learning ambience also enhances the advantages of having an online degree. Incorporation of proper technology into classroom makes learning more fun and interactive.
Author Bio : Leona Sharon is a content provider for latest trends in online learning. She explains the advantages of online distance learning courses which you can pursue anywhere in the world. In this passage she describes how implementing technology in learning is a good way to make it more interesting to students.
July 24, 2012
Guest Post: How Online Teaching Works
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The advancement of online learning, over the last decade, has been huge and massive. So much so, that career-oriented individual across the world have taken up online education, as their preferred mode of study. Well, the natural extension to distance learning – learning online has not only opened up potential educational opportunities for learners, but has opened up career opportunities for individuals looking up to flexible working hours. Yes indeed, online teaching has created a space in the world of distance education initiating a career opening across the world.

Teaching online and the Opportunities

If you love to teach and hold a fascination towards the career opportunity then, online teaching holds for you multifarious opportunity. The trend that until a decade back did not witness much credibility has carved a niche for itself in the present age. Thanks, to the technological advancements and change in the world of education, online education soon became the preferred mode of study among careerists, as it allowed flexible and convenient learning.

Now, when it comes to the idea of teaching online, the only difference that you will feel in the online setting is the absence of a physical environment. However, with the use of technological tools, the online classroom can be offered the feeling of a traditional class setting mostly through discussion boards, online chat forums, and other communication tools. Well, if you have been wondering about the ways of approaching a particular university then, all you need to do is contact the administrator’s office and drop your resume.

Teaching Online – The Training

A number of online universities at present offer training programs to make the faculty more familiar with online teaching programs. In most instances, the university focuses on conducting an online teaching class with the faculty group itself to make the transition from traditional environment to online environment easy. Alternatively, the universities also consider sending you the software or materials or booklets to make you familiar with the online teaching process. Most universities rely upon using Blackboard – the online management system to facilitate a better online education environment.

Teaching Online – Course layout

Online teachers into the task must always remember that not all students enrolled into an online education program might be tech-savvy. Therefore, it is important for the teachers to take the initiative to integrate the lessons in them with patience. Additionally, it is also important for you to make navigation easy for all students without incorporating much complexity. Some online universities however, focus on having a standard layout for all courses and programs.

Also, remember that the syllabus of an online program is no different from the traditional courses. Assignments, tests, project submission, and discussion form an important part of the online teaching session.

With online education programs, the instructor must always expect student contact at a larger base. Communications forms an important part of online teaching and the role isn’t just restricted to posting lessons.

Author Bio – Melissa Spears holds a keen interest towards the advancement of distance learning programs all across the world. In this write-up she tries to explain the fact that online teaching is all about getting your steps right in the educational approach.
March 9, 2012