Today it is up to me to announce a new project of mine. On the 1st of June 2009 a couple of colleagues and I will open the E-Teachers Academy.
The Academy is a direct result of my experience in the past year teaching online and the talks I had with different CEOs, colleagues and students from around the globe. The main goal of the Academy will be to empower teachers for education 2.0.
So let me explain the idea.
Right now there are two main problems for online teachers. The first one is the lack of students. This problem is natural as the whole online learning / teaching market is still not mainstream. There are already some students available of course but not enough to get every teacher into work or at let me precise full employment. But one thing is sure, this market will be enormous as soon as students come online. And for this day, teachers should be prepared the best way possible.
Which brings us to the second problem. Most teachers today are not prepared to teach online. I am not talking about their knowledge of the topic they want to teach, may it be languages, mathematics, biology or whatever. I am talking about their knowledge about the internet, computers in general, software, marketing, graphic design, webhosting, blogging etc.
But if you decide to take your teaching online you soon will notice that the actual teaching part is the smallest thing to worry about. The teaching itself is maybe 5% of the business. 95% is about all the rest. If you want to be successful, you need to know about those 95%.
And this is where the E-Teachers Academy comes in. At the E-Teachers Academy you will be trained by experts of their field. You will learn how to handle free software so you can build lesson slides for virtual classrooms, edit video lessons for YouTube, edit audio files for podcasts and iTunes, create learning e-books, interactive online exercises. You will learn how to create a blog, a website and how to monetize them. You will gain basic knowledge in graphic- and webdesign.
But you will also learn important skills in marketing, presentation, networking, law, economics and how to get the best out of teaching platforms.
Besides our own teacher staff there will be guest lectures by CEOs and managers of the leading companies in the industry. They will explain their products to you and how you can use them best for your teaching carreer.
There will also be a forum where the staff and you the students (teachers) can meet ask questions to your teachers, suggest new topics, show your homeworks etc.
The enrollment fee will be one single payment for one year. After your graduation from the Academy you can choose to stay with us for reduced fee. The exact prices will be mentioned in our first newsletter but I can already tell you that there will be a reduced fee (50%) for all teachers signing up before June 30th. And I grant all teachers a 30 day money back guarantee, of course.
Therefore, I invite you all to subscribe to the E-Teachers Academy Newsletter and to follow us on Twitter to be updated during the pre-launch time in May.
Looking forward to see you all in the E-Teachers Academy. Together we will change education to the better for all of us.
Empowering Teachers for Education 2.0
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