2007-03-27 22:17:20 · 1 answers · asked by Mathematician 1 in Education & Reference ➔ Teaching
If you want to work for yourself:
I highly recommend that you explore the platforms you will need to teach from when working online with students. There are synchronous and assynchrous platforms available. Synchronous is where you are actually working live with the student just using the internet to get together. The best platform for that is Elluminate. They have several different versions of their service available. I recommend playing around with their free 3-seater (you as the teacher will be taking up one seat) to start off with. There is a 10-seater that is stripped down of some of the more powerful tools, but it would allow a bigger class. The 10 seater version was $50 a month last spring. I don't know if it is still that price though. If you plan on really goiong big time, you can get their Academic Edition and have unlimited seats and all the tools. I think that one is over $1000 a month. Here is the link directly to their free 3-seater landing page:
http://www.elluminate.com/vroom/
In addition to, or instead of, a synchronous online classroom, you may want to have an assynchronous website to host class material, post a schedule, have interactive self-quizes, links to good sites, etc. Assynchronous means that the studnt drops in at their convenience and learns independently without a teacher present. I highly recommend Moodle for assynchronous hosting. Moodle is a course/content management system. It is open source and therefore free; though, you will still have to find a server host and pay them. If you are not good working with server side software, how about you find sites that already have Moodle set up and offer both server and Moodle as a package. There is a free one at Virtual Homeschool Group. VHSG has just in the last two days moved their website to a bigger and faster server, so lots of links are in the process of being reconnected at the moment. If you are understanding enough to stop in and realize that they are still 'unpacking boxes' from the move, stop in and take a look at http://www.virtualhomeschoolgroup.com/
If you are interested, you can come into my Elluminate classroom and I will get you up to speed on the use of these tools. We just need to set a mutually convenient time. I will be a bit busy this weekend reconnecting up my course links at VHSG, but I can spare a few hours. To contact me, send an e-mail to armoorefam@centurytel.net.
If you would prefer to work for a company or for a virtual school, just do a websearch for virtual or online schools to get some contact information. You can see what states have K12 virtual schools at the K12 website at http://www.k12.com/. If you happen to live in one of those states, you can still work under the payscale of the public school system (better than private most of the time) and work online as a teacher. You will not so much be teaching with a K12 virtual as you will be supporting parents who are teaching their own children for grades K to 8. They are phasing in their high school levels though which are certified teacher run. K12 will likely be using Elluminate for these live classes, so it still will be an advantage to you to learn to use the tools in there.
I wish you much luck. I love teaching online!
2007-03-29 06:57:21 · answer #1 · answered by viewfromtheinside 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋