Teaching an Online Course: The Professional, Stree-Free Approach

The Advantages of Learning Online…

Who hasn’t received email about online learning and thought how wonderful it would be to “attend” lectures, take exams, and interact with instructors and classmates through chat rooms, without driving to some campus? How convenient: work at your own pace from the convenience of your home or office. Most online courses have been degree programs in fields that lend themselves to this approach, like business, technology, health, and law.

How many more people want simply to enrich their lives by delving into something interesting or practical on an ongoing basis? That has been a service community colleges supply, hiring many people with specialized knowledge and experience in a wide variety of fields that appeal to enough citizens to make it worth listing in the catalog.

What About the Advantages of Teaching Online?

When you stop to think about it, most adults accumulate enough knowledge and experience to have something worth sharing with others. Most of them truly love their special field and believe they have a unique slant on it. Only a few, however, apply to teach at their community college and those who are accepted get to share their expertise and passion with only a few dozen people at most per semester. Many knowledgeable and passionate people are intimidated at the thought of designing a course – writing up descriptions, syllabi, outlines, and lecture notes without professional guidance or assistance. Of those who get this far, how many freeze at the thought of standing up in front of a classroom and talking in public?

If this describes you, there is great news. You can now teach what you know and love while “hiding” behind the Internet. Even better, you can get talented professionals to help you create and develop a truly excellent course with all the trimmings. You can get access to tools that let you enroll hundreds of students at once and still manage to encourage them to complete their assignments, pass quizzes, and participate in online discussion groups.

UniversalClass.com – Where Learning and Teaching Come Together…

One such online service is UniversalClass.com. It offers a “Virtual Classroom” in cyberspace. You set up an account quickly and easily, and then concentrate on typing in or uploading specific content for your course through a “wizard,” an automated program that prompts for necessary information and offers hints. Make no mistake, it takes planning and effort on your part, But you are guided through the whole process. Once you’re satisfied with your draft, UniversalClass.com professionals critique it and tell you how to improve it. Once the Course Review Committee approves your course, it is made available online to potentially thousands of learners, who pay whatever course fees you stipulate. You receive sixty percent of these fees. And you’ve paid nothing to set up the course. As you “teach” the class repeatedly, feedback from students and your own evolving insights can be edited in and your course grows in excellence.

What Can I Teach?

It’s time to brainstorm. Start a notebook of ideas. You don’t have to be a “guru” or expert for people at some level to benefit from your insight. Four to six years work or field experience after finishing school may suffice to build a practical course around. Help people learn the “inner workings” of something you do every day effortlessly. Help them avoid trial and error. If you are a skilled craftsperson or hobbyist, you have the makings of a first-rate course. Remember, the Internet lets you incorporate artwork, music, and even movie clips – without you having to know any programming.

What do you enjoy talking, reading, and learning about most? What do you enjoy doing the most? What do you find yourself talking about most with family and friends? What do people most ask your help with? What good and bad life experiences have you been through? How did you cope? What are the biggest problems on the job and how would you fix them? What do you find yourself saying, “I could do that better” about? Or, “If only they’d try such-and-such.” Start here.

People want courses in things like:

accounting bookkeeping marketing financing office skillstelemarketing entrepreneurship New Age self-improvement holistic healing Yoga fitness birthing dreams self-hypnosis meditationquitting smoking computers at every level of expertise and every specialty cooking (all forms) the visual arts – how to and academic views decorating landscaping genealogy reading music playing instruments the languages of the world lawcriminology taxation parenting grand-parenting caring for elderly parents caring for petsreal estate religion social work…

With a little imagination, your list of ideas can grow to unbelievable heights…

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Jennifer Gibbs and her dedicated team of pro writers are waiting at JenniferGibbs.com/ecoursedevelopment JenniferGibbs.com/ecoursedevelopment to help make your online teaching dreams come true. Whether you need a little creative development, a list of places to help get your online teaching business rolling, or even a full-length course written and formatted in 2 weeks or less – we’re here to get the job done. Take a moment to check out our website, or feel free to drop an email (with the scoop on your course needs and ideas) to mailto:info@jennifergibbs.com info@jennifergibbs.com

Learn to Lead with Business Administration Degrees

It takes more than a strong personality to be effective in business administration. To be a good leader, you have to be someone others will follow. Do you have what it takes to earn a business administration degree?

Follow the Leader
Simply put, those in business administration careers coordinate the administrative support services that allow organizations to operate efficiently. These services may include conference planning and travel, equipment repair and replacement, information and data processing, mail, materials scheduling and distribution, parking, payroll, printing and reproduction, records management, secretarial and reception, security, telecommunications management, and personal property procurement, supply, and disposal.

In order to effectively coordinate these administrative support services, business administration professionals must have excellent communication skills and the ability to work with and supervise all staff members. You’ll need to know each employee, and be able to allocate assignments and issue deadlines. Furthermore, you’ll have to make sure that work is being accomplished in a productive manner. This requires evaluating each administrative support staff member’s performance, which may include everything from the joy of recommending a promotion to the tough task of recommending a transfer, demotion, or dismissal.

Take the Lead With a Business Administration Degree
To pursue a business administration career, many employers require a business administration degree, or simply an associate or even a bachelor’s degree in business, management, human resources, or finance. Your business administration degree program may include courses in accounting, business law, business mathematics, computer applications, human resources, and office technology. A business administration degree at the master’s level is also encouraged.

The skills you’ll hone on your way to a business administration degree include teamwork, problem-solving, flexibility, and leadership, as well as determination, loyalty, poise, and confidence. You’ll also have the opportunity to master your ability to organize and coordinate work efficiently, set priorities, and motivate others — key to success in your business administration career.

Lead Me On
Office and administrative support supervisors and managers held 1.5 million jobs in 2004; jobs for those with a business administration degree are found in practically every industry. Median annual earnings of office and administrative support supervisors and managers were $41,030 in May 2004, with the highest 10 percent earning more than $67,800.

If you’d like to increase your business administration marketability, pursue the Certified Manager (CM) designation offered by the Institute of Certified Professional Managers of James Madison University. The CM program, which focuses on the application of practical skills and techniques, is composed of three modules: foundations of management, planning and organizing, and leading and controlling. Once you pass all three exams, you may use the Certified Manager title.

Take the lead with a collegebound.net/clickcount.php?id=6963920&goto= collegesurfing.com/ce/search business administration degree, and launch your business administration career today.

To find college and career schools near you, surf collegesurfing.com CollegeSurfing.com.

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Robyn Tellefsen is a frequent contributor to The CollegeBound Network. Learn more about collegesurfing.com finding a school or career that’s right for you!

Birds – The Ferruginous Hawk

The male ferruginous hawk is quite large; however, the female is a bit larger. Ferruginous hawks have rusty colored feathers on theirs wings and their legging feathers. Most live in the western Great Basin and Great Plains. They are excellent fliers that know how to soar in the sky for a long time. Ferruginous hawks also stay in uncultivated pastures on prairies and grasses in western North America, however they spend most their time in arid and semiarid grassland regions. Ferruginous hawks avoid high elevations, forest interiors and places like narrow canyons and cliff areas.

During 1900, ferruginous hawks nested though south and central Alberta, but in 1980, the ferruginous hawk was designated threatened. Today it is still designated vulnerable by the Endangered Wildlife in Canada and the population has declined in most areas in the US except California. The main reason for their endangerment is the disappearance of native short grass that hawks use for hunting.

Ferruginous hawks like to hunt gophers, however hawks in Alberta eats mice and white-jack rabbits. Hunting generally occurs in the early morning and the late afternoon. They can attack from short distances and strike prey on ground, use aerial hunting from about 300 feet, or just fly after prey from a perch. They do not hunt very well on croplands because their large wings and size prevent them from effective manoeuvre among grains on the ground.

Hawks build their nest in trees including cottonwoods, willows and swamp oaks along the waterways. which occurs in mid March in Colorado and Kansas but they will nest on the ground if necessary. The male hawk collects most of the material such as grass, twigs, old bones and crow or horse dung, while the female arranges it into a nest, which they use year after year. They lay their eggs between February and July and their nest usually contains three or four white eggs.

Michael Russell
Your Independent guide to birds.free-resource-guide.com/ Birds

Homeschooling – Help and Support

There are several good reasons for schooling your children at home. Many people have chosen that route lately. In fact, home school is something that is growing in popularity by leaps and bounds. If you’re worried about having the proper help and support in doing this know that there are a lot of places that you can look.

These days there are several websites that are entirely devoted to schooling children at home. The website homeschool.com/ is just one example of a website that will help you to achieve all the knowledge and resources necessary to successfully educate your children at home. These websites will include some lesson plans and direction as to how to use them. They will help you ensure that the lessons you are giving your children are the ones that they should be learning at their age level.

Every state has an education website that lists the standards of education. This is a list of everything that should be covered each school year according to that state’s standardized tests. You can use those standards as a guideline to tell you the subject matter that you will need to cover for your child each year. Using that information you can begin your search for material that is within the scope of that subject.

The website mentioned above is a good place to start your search for the appropriate material. It will give you resources to use as well as links to other helpful websites. Not all students learn in the same way. Therefore it’s necessary to find a variety of material for each lesson covered. In this way if your child is struggling with a concept, you’ll have a variety of lessons to help them through their struggles.

Another very nice thing about these websites that offer help with home schooling is that several of them offer a connection to a community. Adding yourself to this community will give you the opportunity of speaking with others that may have more experience in this field. You can get advice from others and learn their lessons. They may be able to help if your child is struggling with a lesson. Talking to others with experience will allow you to avoid mistakes that others have learned in the past. They will be able to tell you why what they did didn’t work and then you can try something different. This will save you and your child much aggravation when struggling through something that neither of you are able to overcome otherwise.

You will find that there is a lot of help and support for those that have decided to educate their children at home. With a little research and direction you’ll find that there are several people out there doing the same thing that you are. Working together will help you and the others achieve the goal of successfully educating your children at home.

Another resource for homeschool.get-the-info.net/Homeschool_Resources.html home school help and support is homeschool.get-the-info.net homeschool.get-the-info.net

Gary Blum E-Learning: Effective Employee Training

Training is essential to any employee and provides not only a benefit to them but also to the company in increased productivity and employee job satisfaction. The high costs of travel combined with increasing strained budgets have meant that training can sometimes be the first thing to be cut when focusing on the bottom line. Companies are turning to a more cost-effective solution through online education and e-learning.

Training an employee is essential for any business, whether it be a fast food establishment or a multi-million dollar software company. One of the most effective ways to train employees is to let them get education at their own pace through e-learning training programs. Not only does this eliminate costly travel expenses but it also allows the employee to take the training on their own schedule as they are available. If an employee cannot finish the online education is one sitting they can easily come back to where they left off next time. Furthermore, if there is a question or a concept the employee does not understand the e-learning system lets them review and go over materials as often as they desire.

One of the foremost designers of e-learning software is Gary Blum Designs. They have developed online education systems for a number of major companies including Charles Schwab, Cygent and Sybase. If your company does not have an internal training department then hiring an outside contractor such as Gary Blum Designs can be the best solution for getting quality e-learning materials delivered right to your employees.

Most online education includes quiz and performance evaluation software at the end of the course. This information can be stored for use by management to see training weak-spots in the company or judge individual performance. Many times employees can re-take missed quizzes or evaluations and never be asked the same question twice thanks to the technology behind the e-learning application.

Nicholas Haffner is a writer and internet publisher who likes to write about 1-elearning.com elearning and educational issues in general. Check out his e-learning news and in depth information website 1-elearning.com 1-elearning.com.

Drama in the classroom – Tips to Get Your Students Educated by Bringing Drama Into Their Lives

Plays are great for an after-school project, but classrooms are the perfect platform for drama as well. There are many ways to incorporate drama into subject matter that may capture the attention of even the most apethetic students.

· Scriptwriting: what better way to bring a subject to life than to let students make a skit to teach or demonstrate it? There are several advantages to skits in the classroom:

· Depth-Students can be required to do some digging to make their skits truthful. Emphasize in the assignment that facts must be the basis, even if exaggeration is used.

· Writing practice-Students who would hate writing an essay or even a paragraph are often eager to write a skit.

· Real-life feedback-Students see the audience’s reaction and know how successful they were with bringing their idea to life.

· Cooperation-Students often do better writing their skits in groups, and they learn the give and take of ideas as they work together.

· Multiple Intelligences-Skit writing also allows more expression for kinesthetic learners, visual-spatial learners, and even musical/rhythmic learners if they’re allowed to add background music, sound effects, original songs, or rap.

Some interesting ways to go from there:
Quotations-it’s hard for some students to grasp what goes into quotation marks. After skits are read, a lesson on that topic will mean more, because what they wrote for their characters to say is right there in black and white. You might ask them to turn a section of their skit into prose, using quotation marks for what the characters said and adding a bit of description, the indicators of who said what, and some mention of emotion or movement.

Editing-Most of us write too much when we begin writing dialogue. Have students work on each others’ scripts or in small groups and slice-and-dice to get the leanest, crispest dialogue they can manage. Read the “before” and “after” aloud to hear the difference.

Effect-Split the class into two groups. Have one half listen to the skit and watch as it’s performed. Have the other half read it silently. Discuss as a whole the difference in perceptions. This can lead to discussion of why Shakespeare should be seen and not read.

Suggested skits:

English: anything from transposing a short story to the stage to explaining why
e.e. cummings hated punctuation.

Math: the discovery of a process that changed mathematics, like the Egyptians working out geometry.

Science: any great discovery; the skit might recreate the experiment or moment

History: detail on an event or a fictionalized “what if”. We tried Henry VIII for murder.

Social science: a day in the life of, oh…Freud, maybe?

Art/Music: the “story” of someone’s inspiration for a famous work

Peg Herring is a retired teacher AND a published playwright and author. Her ebook, Plays on a Shoestring, is available at keenpr.com/e-books keenpr.com/e-books and her mystery novel, Macbeth’s Niece, is due in bookstores in early 2008. You can email her at mailto:pegfish@yahoo.com pegfish@yahoo.com or visit her website at pegherring.com pegherring.com

Mental Math Practice Worksheets

Today, we all know the importance of learning and marveling at mathematics. And every time we visit our children’s schools we see Chinese and Indian students marveling at SATs. And we all know why they succeed in Engineering and Medical fields. Answer is quite simple, they are good at Math. But why are they so good? How did they study Math that makes them so good at that one arduous subject?

When we go to teacher meetings we are told by the teachers, to marvel at Math one must practice, practice and practice. But what if the child loses interest in practicing math? We all have had our share of experiencing the monotonous boring task of memorizing times tables. And after so many years, the same is repeated by the teachers everywhere, except, Asia. What do these Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Indians, etc.) do to make their children so good with Mathematics? Answer is quite simple, practice, practice & practice. But what is it that those students actually practice?

Lately, Abacus math has taken some of these Asian nations by storm. Abacus is a Latin word that has its origins in the Greek words abax or abakon (meaning “table” or “tablet”) which in turn, possibly originated from the Semitic word abq, meaning “sand”. The abacus is an instrument, a manual tool invented by the Chinese 2000 years ago. Over the past five years, in nations like Malaysia, Taiwan and India, countless tutoring centers like Sylvan, Huntington and Kumon have sprung up but with one goal in mind, tutor abacus math. Most of these centers offer training using the Japanese “Soroban abacus”, which has one upper row of beads and four lower rows. The Soroban abacus is particularly effective for teaching mathematical calculating skills to young children.

Using an abacus, a child can do all arithmetic calculations up to 10 digits and master the skill of doing it mentally, without relying on modern devices such as calculators.

There are procedures and training methodologies to master abacus use. When children use both hands to move the beads for small and large arithmetic calculations, the quick communication between hands and brain not only stimulates brain cells promoting speedier and faster calculation ability but also promotes quick, balanced and whole brain development.

Now that you know what are all the benefits of learning abacus math – let us continue talking about practicing math. Every textbook comes with few practice problems and we always feel that these few problems are not enough. We want more practice problems for our children and students. The next best alternative is to find math practice worksheets. There are many websites that offer you download-able practice worksheets for a small fee. And there are some websites that offer you for free. Some offer you predefined sheets where as very few websites offer you build your own math practice worksheets.

Usage of math practice sheets early on can instill a great habit of enjoying math and at the same time help to solidify mental math skills. And using these sheets to perform abacus math mentally is absolute fun for a child.

Shilpa Rao is an experienced abacus nurtureminds.com mental math tutor. She focuses on curriculum development and has recently helped develop online “build your own nurtureminds.com/worksheets/math.php mental math practice worksheets”.