This morning was so dark and rainy that I turned on all the lights in the living room, and with nothing happening outside, we decided it was time to start a 10 hour webinar on improving our online teaching. This particular offering was recorded by educators from the Stanford Online High School (Yes, that Stanford. The place is a grade 7-12 model school for education and research. It is completely online.) and provided free to teachers.
From the start of the course the content was no-nonsense: well-organized, clearly delivered, and of course relevant to the situation we find ourselves in. Were there bells and whistles, fun and games, interactivity? No, for although the organizers were surprised by the thousands of people participating live, not to mention the many times more that number who would watch the recording, there's only so much you can do in a one-off situation like that.
Still, we wanted to learn, and the fact that this experience would fulfill a big portion of our independent professional learning requirement, made it all the more important to us. But then... we paused to get paper for notes, and a little later we logged in to see what our district requirements would be. The we stopped to talk about the content, and then take the dog out, go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, and order lunch. As much as we wanted to watch, there were just too many other things competing with that recording.
Which was the biggest lesson of the day.
From the start of the course the content was no-nonsense: well-organized, clearly delivered, and of course relevant to the situation we find ourselves in. Were there bells and whistles, fun and games, interactivity? No, for although the organizers were surprised by the thousands of people participating live, not to mention the many times more that number who would watch the recording, there's only so much you can do in a one-off situation like that.
Still, we wanted to learn, and the fact that this experience would fulfill a big portion of our independent professional learning requirement, made it all the more important to us. But then... we paused to get paper for notes, and a little later we logged in to see what our district requirements would be. The we stopped to talk about the content, and then take the dog out, go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, and order lunch. As much as we wanted to watch, there were just too many other things competing with that recording.
Which was the biggest lesson of the day.
Thanks for the tip! I will check out the Standford course if you think it's been useful.
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