The futurte of online education

 

Online learning is the future of education that will destroy the traditional education and schools.

In my opinion the educational transformation done these years will continue a long and online not at schools, colleges and universities and it will not be an option. Now we are at the transformation stage.

Actually it is really good, shorten distances, high quality of education, enables students and teachers to set their own learning and teaching journey, flexible and easy to use, work and learn at the same time from anywhere in the world, save money, offers wide selections of programs and getting certificates, diplomas and degrees and the most important thing is that it is more effective than traditional education methods.

What can you do now that we were not able to do a year ago

 

Corona virus revolution transformed many industries around the world especially education. This transformation permits us to work, teach and learn from home using new different platforms such as Microsoft teams, google classroom, and zoom ...and get to use many other helpful tools and applications. Also we got educational training and development to teach and engage students through online classes and create our own educational philosophy of teaching and learning online.

At the same time it stimulates teachers and students ability to work hard and self dependence to reach their goals.

Learning/Teaching Online Challenges

 

Switching from traditional classroom into online one face many challenges: 

• Training and adaptation to this shift.
• Technical difficulties.
• Internet connection problems.
• Isolation and self motivation.
• Time management.

These challenges affect teachers and students in the same way to complete the educational curriculum.

Guiding Students When Working Online to Avoid Problems

Teachers and instructors play an important role to guide students and have a good teaching-learning relationship and environment. Developing online instructional strategies facilitates teaching-learning process. below are some of these strategies:

• Connect educational needs to individual student needs.
• Use easy applications and tools.
• Motivate students and grab their attention.
  
• Involve students in practical learning activities and carry out their own plans to increase their responsibilities.
• Encourage students to brainstorm ideas with their peers to engage them and feel connected to others.
  
• Place lecture links, websites, notes... for the students to review or send them via email.
  
• Allow discussions  to analyze their ways of thinking.
• Give them a chance to share their own experience.
  
• Use self-directed learning technique with the students so that every student will be able to search, read and write about a specific topic to explain it to their classmates.
• Small groups to work, share, discuss and solve problems to see various viewpoints.
• Allow students to choose the groups they want to work up with.
  
• Give the students the opportunity to choose their projects according to their special interests
• Give enough time for all students.
• Offer options, listen to them and ask them for help.
  
• Provide formula sheets, sample exercises, short videos... to supplement knowledge.
• keep parents updated.
  

How to be a Digital Citizen

 

 A digital citizen should be a good user of digital technologies to communicate with others whether by posting on social media, sending emails or commenting on an online discussion. Digital citizenship is even expanding more than that, it becomes for connecting with friends and family, learning, shopping, looking up recipes, banking... that's why we should be a responsible digital citizen to create a safe online spaces.

Here are a few tips to be a responsible digital citizen :

• Treat people the way you want to be treated with respect and kindness.
  
• Encourage critical thinking, how to interact with others, and ask others if they need any help.
  
• Keep information private, don't share any picture, video or location about you, family or friends.
  
• Be yourself and leave a positive footprint.
• Protect yourself and be careful while communicating with strangers.
• Create strong passwords and don't give address or credit card number for anyone or any site.
  

Being a good digital citizen reveals our real-life picture and prevents us from cyber-bullying.

Tools that can be used in Online Assessment

 

Teachers need to know their students to start their teaching process and reach everyone. Online assessment tools are necessary for teachers to evaluate students, improving learning and reflecting the student's understanding and level of effort, and testing their knowledge.

There are many online assessment tools:

1.  Socrative: quizzes and questions with real time grading. Can create activities and shuffle questions. 
   
   
   
2.  Google forms: make quick and simple graded quizzes and assignments and surveys that includes multiple choice questions, short answers, true or false... with answer keys and feedback for each question according to students responses.
   
   
    
    
3. Mentimeter: make presentations more attracting and more interactive using word clouds, quizzes...
   
   
   
4. Poll everywhere: polls,quizzes, attendance...with real time feedback
   
   
    
    
5. Kahoot: game that creates quizzes in minutes, timed and scored by teacher, students can also create their own "kahoots" to share with classmates
   
   

These tools and many others allow flexibility for questions, quizzes.. providing grading, graphs, results and quick sharing with students.

Integrating Technology Into Teaching

 

Technology took a considerable space and plays an important role in our lives through it's involvement in everything around us such as: cars, machines, phones, computers, cameras, tablets, social media ... 

This generation was born with this technology and they have to keep up with it's development so it have to be included in their educational curriculum especially after this pandemic and the urgency to complete with online classes.

Integrating technology into teaching is very helpful for teachers in many ways :

1. Avoid routine and lecturing using power point, games, polls, videos, graphics...
   
2. Differentiate instruction to modify information that fits students abilities.
3. Facilitates communication with students and parents.
4. Track students attendance, grades, progress, feedback's...

On the other hand this integration enhance students learning experience by :

1. Increase students engagement, interactive, participation and motivation during class.
   
2. Help students with different learning styles. 
3. Increase hands-on learning opportunities.
   
4. Use technology in a good way instead of social media and games.
   
5. Easily unlimited accessibility. 
   
6. Working independently or collaboratively at their own space.
   
7. Prepare students with life skills and careers.

One of the important factors in integrating technology into teaching is that it is an accessible long-distance learning for both teachers and students, no need to cross and go away along distances to reach schools, collages or universities.