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There are plenty of options for teachers looking to boost their skills a bit. You could hop on Twitter and participate in a hashtag chat, ask a colleague, or participate in some good ol’ fashioned professional development. But what happens when you don’t really feel like doing any of those things and just want to learn at your own pace on your own time? Then some of these free online courses are worth knowing about.
Basically, these courses are designed to help you bolster your skills, learn something new, and basically improve your life. From EdX to Coursera, there is no shortage of places to tackle some new ideas and skills you’ve been putting off. Best of all, they’re all free and easy to take!
Use the arrows below to scroll through the many free online courses teachers are taking. I’ve added in the supplied descriptions to help you out. You might find something great!
Learn to become an effective builder of sentences using the basic tools of grammar, punctuation, and writing. By dedicating yourself to the craft of writing, you will learn to use the eight parts of speech and grammar to develop the four basic sentence types into a well-organized, detailed paragraph. This course is designed for anyone who wants to become a better writer. If you need to write more clearly for work, prepare for a placement test for a college, or improve your skills for current writing projects, this class will definitely be beneficial.
Objectives:
- Students will be able to identify and correct some sentence level grammatical and punctuation errors.
- Students will be able to develop four sentence types: simple, compound, complex and compound-complex.
- Students will be able to recognize and use all four sentence types.
- Students will be able to develop a clear topic sentence.
- Students will be able to write a well-organized, detailed paragraph.
Why would you want to take this course? There is a variety of reasons:
- As a pre-Assessment activity
- As a petition for English placement
- As a brush-up for students while in writing classes
- As a brush-up for students who don’t/can’t enroll in an English class
- As a resource for flipped/blended classrooms
- To become a better writer
Frustration. Hard Knocks. Sleepless nights. Tea
Those are just a few of the ways that rookie teachers describe their first year in the profession. And those sentiments have been validated by countless research studies that show that students, on average, learn significantly less when they’re taught by rookies. Unfortunately, many educators believe this is a necessary “rite of passage” – a sort of hazing that one must experience on their path to effective teaching.
We don’t believe that.
Over the past 6 years, the Match Teacher Residency has developed and refined an approach to specifically address the challenges that are unique to the rookie teacher experience. In this four-week course, we’ll explore the three ideas that we’ve found to contribute radically to success as a rookie teacher.
Videogames are one of the fastest trending topics in media, education, and technology. Research across fields as disparate as science, literacy, history, visual processing, curriculum, and computer science suggests that videogames aren’t just fun – they can actually be good for your mind as well. In this course, we will discuss current research on the kinds of thinking and learning that goes into videogames and gaming culture. We’ll investigate the intellectual side of digital gameplay, covering topics that range from perception and attention in Left 4 Dead 2 to the development of historical understanding in Civilization to collaborative learning in massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft. Throughout the course, we examine the inherent tensions between contemporary youth culture and traditional education and new developments in games for learning that promise to help bridge that growing divide.
Designed for teachers and learners in every setting – in school and out, in formal learning environments or at home – Introduction to Accountable Talk is an introduction to the theory and practice of well-structured talk that builds the mind. You will learn from the growing body of research and from educators who put it into practice, why intentionally structured talk promotes learning and how educators can design talk situations that promote learning. The course includes video examples of children and adults engaging in Accountable Talk in a variety of settings and will enable you to begin to build Accountable Talk in your own learning community. While the Accountable Talk program was originally developed for K-12 classrooms, its structures and practices are readily and productively applicable to any situation in which people get together and talk in order to learn. The course was developed by the School of Education and the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. The Institute for Learning was founded by Lauren Resnick, an internationally renowned cognitive psychologist, in 1995. Since then, under Resnick’s leadership, the Institute for Learning has worked to support the improvement of education and achievement of all students in more than 70 school districts in 23 different states.
This course provides teachers with the foundation for understanding the movement towards virtual instruction. It introduces fundamental knowledge needed by teachers to succeed in a technology-dependent, instructional environment. You will explore the history of online learning and understand how a variety of delivery models are evolving in the K-12 environment, ranging from completely online to hybrid or blended classrooms. We will discuss how the programs work and who they serve, addressing some basics about equity issues, access and school funding, as well as ethical and legal issues that support and challenge the models. Upon completion of the course, you will understand what it takes to transition from teaching in the classroom to providing virtual instruction.
This course is part of the Foundations of Teaching for Learning program which is designed to assist people who are currently teaching but have had no formal teacher education improve their understanding of their role and work as a teacher. This set of courses will enhance your knowledge and understanding about learning and teaching and what makes a teacher a professional. In order to receive a certificate indicating that you have completed the whole programme, you will need to sig up for the signature track for this and the next six courses.
Practical activities are provided to assist you in using what you have learned to improve your teaching practice. While these are optional, it is strongly recommended that you undertake them if at all possible.
Of particular importance is a guide to the development of a portfolio to help you organize and document your thinking about what you have learned. In addition, you may be able to use the portfolio to access other opportunities in the future.
Site: Edudemic
