The year of 2020 has seen a massive increase of online teaching around the world. At the same time, the role of online pedagogy is as essential as ever. As teachers have come to notice, top-notch teaching practices are needed to truly engage students who are taking part of education through their computers.
At the same time, teacher training is also moving online. Less and less training happens face-to-face at schools during the pandemic. Similarly to any online pedagogy, technology offers both opportunities and challenges for online teacher training.
The future of teacher training is online – let’s make that future bright!
High quality teacher training has never been this important for schools. As teachers need to cope with the challenges of both ICT skills and online pedagogy, the training programs need to add an instant, added value. There is no room for wasting time and resources anymore!
Online teacher training offers flexibility in terms of both time and place. The teachers do not need to travel or plan their schedules according to live workshops, but they can take part in training programs when it best suits their timetable.
However, online pedagogy needs to meet the 21st century demands that we wish to educate for our children. Online Teacher Professional Development 3.0 of the modern days needs to be based on learner engagement and, at its best, collaboration. The value of online teacher training is now measured through its impact on the classroom practices – long online seminars with no interaction are part of the past now!
What have we learned from the teachers?
Our firm experience on online teacher professional development programs has taught us that training programs need to build on relevance. Every learning experience needs to be connected with working life. That is why we think that online learning tasks should be able to be completed in real (online) classrooms.
Teachers often highlight the importance of reflection in professional development. Indeed, innovative assessment and feedback practices are a crucial part of teacher training. We believe in inspiring, digital methods in this field. For instance, digital portfolios offer new possibilities for teachers to reflect on their expertise – and to share it with their communities.
Make sure you are not training teachers of the future with methods from the past!
We are launching an online course Finnish Lessons on Teaching Coding that encapsulates our Code School Finland pedagogy. The course introduces the key pedagogical principles for teaching coding: How to maximise student learning and engagement through collaboration and creativity? The course is best suited for K-12 teachers. This 100% online course is the 1st in the Code School Finland series of the Online Teacher Professional Development 3.0 program, which will lead to Certification by Code School Finland.
Read more and enroll the course here.
