Online Professional Development
There are many, many opportunities for professional development that can be found online. They are self-paced and can be accessed anytime, anywhere. They range in cost from absolutely free to several hundred dollars. Courses can include opportunities for collaboration, feedback, and even graduate credit. Options are available to satisfy the needs of virtually any individual educator. This paper will highlight two different online professional development opportunities: IntegratingIT, which offers continuing education credit for courses completed, and Freeskills, which offers courses for free but no continuing education credit.
IntegratingIT has joined with MindLeaders.com to provide “the education community a place to find ‘real world’ Strategies, Solutions, and Resources for integrating technology”. Their website addresses issues and interests of the classroom teacher, the school administrator, and the district administrator, as well as offering over 365 courses for professional development. Professional development is directed at teachers, administrators, support staff, and technical staff.
Training is online, anywhere, anytime, and self-paced. It addresses all skill levels. They offer skill assessments to help identify individual needs and allow you to customize your learning to your needs. The courses recommended for classroom teachers are: internet, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and programming. Course format includes simulations, questions, exercises, sample files, and global bookmaking, which allows you to return to the place in the instruction that you left. Technical support is offered through an e-mail technical assistance form, with a promise to contact you ASAP.
The cost varies with different subscription plans. Subscriptions are per person per year and you can take as many courses as you want offered in your plan, within that year. The following table outlines the subscription plans:
|
Subscription Plan |
Price/year/person |
Includes |
|
End User Desktop Computing |
$48.00 |
70+ courses |
|
End User Home and Small Business |
$48.00 |
55+ courses |
|
End User Business Skills Development |
$48.00 |
30+ courses |
|
Technical MCSE |
$96.00 |
75+ courses |
|
Technical Web Development |
$96.00 |
45+ courses |
|
Technical General |
$96.00 |
120+ courses |
|
Combined End User Desktop Computing and Business Skills Development |
$86.00 |
105+ courses |
|
Combined End User |
$120.00 |
165+ courses |
|
Combined Technical |
$245.00 |
245+ courses |
|
Combined End User and Technical |
$345.00 |
400+ courses |
Course topics include: Windows 2000, Microsoft Office User Specialist, Office 2000, Resumes, Microsoft Certified Professional, A+ certification, Cisco, Novell, IIS.40, and SQL Server7. A really nice feature of this site is they offer you the opportunity to take one class for free. This allows you to check out their system before investing in a subscription. If you decide to subscribe, the number of courses you take during your subscription period is only limited by your desire and determination.
You can access IntegratingIT at: http://www.IntegratingIT.com
Technical support is offered through a bulletin board format. To be honest, when I checked this feature, it looked like postings were not always responded to.
This website could be very useful to educators who are comfortable with independent tutorials and want to become familiar with a program, or for those who just want to brush up on program information. I would also recommend it to discover content in a course before enrolling in a course that charges a fee.
You can access Freeskills at: http://www.freeskills.com