Every Online Teacher Has eLearning Superpowers
Your unique personality traits mean you have particular strengths. When you focus on those strengths, and bring your whole personality to teaching, you become much more than a faceless instructor.
You become an engaging educator with the power to inspire your students to be successful.
Discovering your own eLearning superpowers is not difficult. You simply drill down to your most dominant personality characteristics. And then you think about how you can bring them to your online teaching role.
If you haven’t already taken this crash course in finding your eLearning superpowers, you might want to do that first.
OK – superpowers at the ready?
Great, because you don’t have to leap tall buildings on your own.
It’s about to get even easier to put your powers into practice, with a little help from Educational Technology.
There’s a vast range of EdTech tools available which you can use to amplify and project key aspects of your personality – and make a real impact on your students as a result.
How To Match Educational Technology To Your Own eLearning Superpowers
No matter which personality trait you want to emphasize, there’s bound to be an EdTech tool that can enhance it.
Here are some examples and ideas for getting started.
If humor is your superpower…
You can use humor strategically to create rapport with your students, and add warmth to the eLearning experience. Students respond better to a real human being who allows a little fun into the learning process, rather than keeping things clinical and deadly serious 100% of the time.
Try these tools:
Voki.com is an avatar generator that lets you communicate short messages to students using an avatar that you create. You can make this a fun, creative character, or a more realistic image of yourself. Either way, your personality will shine through in avatar form.
A more direct approach is to use a tool such as Screencast-O-matic.com, which is a screen-capturing tool that also allows you to do a video capture of yourself. This is a great way to present difficult topics with a human face.
If being organized is your superpower…
You inspire a sense of calm and confidence in your students. You return assignments on time, every time. Your students find it reassuring to be part of a class that’s so well-run and logically planned.
Try this tool:
Your learning management system provides a range of convenient tools to help keep your class organized. Are you making the most of it?
You can use the Calendar and Announcements features as communication tools to keep your students informed and on track.
Most learning management systems allow you to choose the start and end dates on elements within the class. Set these tools up prior to the start of your course, and you have an automated system for keeping your students moving in the right direction.
If passion is your superpower…
Passionate teachers radiate a level of enthusiasm that’s extra engaging – and highly contagious. Students can’t help but respond to passionate subject experts who are genuinely interested in what they’re teaching.
Try these tools:
Scoop.it allows you to become an active curator of content. You can gather relevant articles on your topic to use in forum postings or announcements to generate interest and promote current awareness.
Another useful curation and sharing tool is Boundless. Boundless allows faculty to share resources and to curate open source educational resources.
If empathy is your superpower…
Chances are your students find you approachable and compassionate. You have the patience to offer the personal help that some students need to successfully complete an online course.
Try these tools:
You can enhance the caring atmosphere you’ve created in your online classes with technology. Using a type of meeting software such as Adobe Connect, GoToMeeting, or a free meeting tool such as Fuze or Join.Me, your students are able to see your compassion in action.
These tools help to increase engagement, and give you a platform for personalized and respectful communication. And as a bonus, most of these products also allow for recording. You can use the learning content you have created to connect with other students in the current course, or in future classes.
These are just some of the EdTech tools you can use to showcase your eLearning superpowers.
When you bring your whole personality to online teaching, you create a win-win situation: your job gets a whole lot more enjoyable, and your students respond to a teacher they can connect with and genuinely learn from.
Which EdTech tools do you use to engage and inspire your online students?
