Becoming an Effective Online Teacher

Blogging has been a big step for me. It did not come easy. I am not a very active social media user. I connect with people easily and I am very communicative in daily life. But posting publicly has always been tough. It is like a stage fright. But with stage fright I personally dealt through getting on stage. I encourage my students to learn to overcome their inner barriers by taking up the challenge. They develop a lot of their soft skills through extracurricular activities.  This stage fright of mine to write openly to the public is now slowly fading. I guess blogging could be a type of extra-curricular activity I could recommend to my students to develop their soft skills online. Over the past few months, as I have  been sharing my thoughts through a blog, apart from this current one, I have  created 7 posts, roughly 4100 words, and publicly commented on the blogs of my friends and colleagues. My very first blog post has even gone into archive and is no longer readily ...

Organization of the online learning process requires a lot of important decisions. What activities to do synchronously, what activities to do asynchronously, what interventions to make to facilitate and not direct or assign, how to stimulate engagement and independent inquiry? That is indeed a big challenge.  What do we have so far? Video and reading materials designed and placed in the information repository ("FOLDERS"), organised by lessons. Students signed up and organised into groups. A welcome post inclusive of instructions on how to navigate on the platform posted, although the navigation is relatively simple, identical to Facebook.  There are several objectives we as the teachers should pursue: 1. Facilitate inquiry and engagement with the video and reading materials placed in the repository.  2. Facilitate communication and connection amongst students and other participants (knowledge hubs), inclding the teachers and mentors.  3. Track student progress and ad...