When our university began its completely online masters Teacher as Leader program those of us in teacher education were a little concerned. As teachers of education we knew that our responsibility was not just to teach content but also to model effective pedagogy through which content could be presented. We were not just teaching teachers what to teach but also how to teach and we were not sure how this would look in a totally online program. We needed to find creative ways to model the types of pedagogy that we valued in face to face courses—things like interactive discussion, reflective teaching, building a learning community, active engagement, and personal interaction.
This presentation arose out of collaboration between a professor charged with teaching a course in curriculum and instruction and an instructional designer who helped support this process. The goal was to create a course that not only communicated the required content but also did so in a way that modeled technology that could be subsequently used by the students in their teaching. The result was the development of a highly successful course using multiple Web 2.0 tools to increase student engagement and demonstrate how technology can be used to enhance learning.
The goal of this presentation is to share with participants how this course used technology to enhance the online experience for the students and the teacher. This course used student and teacher blogs to create a vehicle for class discussion, used wikis and GoogleDocs to foster collaboration, used video editing software and video sharing sites to help students reflect on their own teaching, and used podcasts and videos in order for the teacher to engage in personal interaction. The use of these tools created a successful online learning experience for all involved.
