This course focuses on helping Lutheran educators familiarize themselves with Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and provide guidance as they work to create their own.  It is divided into two sessions, each lasting two weeks, with an estimated time commitment of 2-3 hours per session.  Thanks to the flexibility of Moodle, you will be able to choose the times that best fit your schedule to complete the course tasks, while still interacting with other participants through the course software.

To take part in this course, you will need an Internet-connected computer (PC or Mac) with a current Web browser (Firefox 3.x, Internet Explorer 8, Safari 4), PDF reading software, Flash and Shockwave players, and word processing software.  This course is being offered free of charge to the Lutheran Educators’ Guild community.

The course will officially begin June 7, 2010 and run through July 5, 2010.  Registrations will remain open until June 4, 2010.  If you are interested in participating, please create a learn.lutheraneducators.com user account then send an email to webmaster@lutheraneducators.com to request the course enrollment key.

The first of these courses will focus on helping Lutheran educators familiarize themselves with Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and provide guidance as they work to create their own.  This course is divided into two sessions, each lasting two weeks, with an estimated time commitment of 2-3 hours per session.  Thanks to the flexibility of Moodle, you will be able to choose the times that best fit your schedule to complete the course tasks, while still interacting with other participants through the course software.

To take part in this course, you will need an Internet-connected computer (PC or Mac) with a current Web browser (Firefox 3.x, Internet Explorer 8, Safari 4), PDF reading software, Flash and Shockwave players, and word processing software.  This course is being offered free of charge to the Lutheran Educators’ Guild community.

The course will begin on April 5, 2010 and run through May 3, 2010.  Enrollment for the first run of the course will be limited to 10 participants.  If you are interested in participating, please email me at webmaster@lutheraneducators.com for more information and to receive the course enrollment key to access the course materials by April 2, 2010.

We are also looking for ideas for the topics of future courses.

21st Century education has be characterized by an explosion of new technologies ripe for use in the classroom.  However, the rate at which these technologies are introduced and increased demands on time and budget often mean that training for these tools is scanty or non-existent.  Teacher adoption of new technologies can be severely hindered by inadequate training, so finding a site dedicated to providing free training videos for teachers is awesome!

The videos are divided into two sections, ELT/ESL and Web 2.0/ICT.  Topics covered range from spelling sites to Twitter.  Most of the videos consist of several indexed “chapters” which break a larger period of training into segments a few minutes long.  This is a convenient feature for teachers who may need to squeeze training into short periods of “free” time throughout a school day.

Strengths

• Wide range of topics covered
• Training presented as step-by-step screen captures
• Chapters make use convenient for busy teachers
• FREE!

Weaknesses

• Site layout de-emphasizes videos
• Lack of sub-categories could present challenge in locating content
• Terms of use unclear

As mentioned, these videos are being provided at no cost.  All that is needed to make use of them is a broadband Internet connection and a modern computer with a Web browser and the latest multimedia plugins (Flash, Shockwave, etc.).  These videos would be of use to anyone wishing to learn more about Web 2.0 tools.

However, the site fails to spell out the terms of use for this content.  The author is asserting copyright over the videos but does not indicate how they may be used.  The site does not indicate if these videos may be used in situations involving more than one teacher (in-service, group training, etc.) or if they can be embedded in presentations or blogs.  Even if these videos can only be used by individual teachers, they are still a great source of online training.