What's Happening?
There is an interesting trend within education today of a moving away from formalized education formats like post-secondary schools, and onto informalized educations streams like online courses, workshops, and tutorials. People are no longer searching out for universities as the primary source of knowledge building. Instead, with technology education in particular, people are beginning to crowd source their education, online.
Crowd sourcing of education opens up many doors for those who do not wish to attend public institutions.
- With the increase of tuition funds nearly doubling in 12 years, students who do not have the finances to afford traditional brick-and-mortar schools are still able to grow their skills and develop their knowledge in a diverse range of areas.
- Students gain increased choice to the range of content they wish to engage within, as not all programs may be available in their geographical area.
- With differing work hours, flexibility of schedules for online courses, and the asynchronous nature of many of them, allow students to complete the work on their own time. Now this comes to a great benefit to those who can self-regulate their abilities, but it also provides a lot of ability to procrastinate and never finish the course they are taking. In fact, the average MOOC only has a completion rate of 7.6% (Phil Hill, 2013, The Most Thorough Summary (to date) of MOOC Completion Rates). As Hill notes, using total enrollment versus total passing is a poor measure for assessing the viability of online courses for education as many students may test the course first, have no intention of completing, or complete sections that are most relevant to themselves.
Since 2010, university enrollment rates have been slowing to stagnation in Canada, and have dropped in attendance in America.
I believe that a growing reason for this trend is the number of tech companies in our world, and those looking for employees who have transferable skills; many of these skills are not found in traditional brick and mortar-post secondary schools. Increasingly, students choose not to go to post-secondary school because they consider a college education "unnecessary" in this new online world (Goral, T. (2016). Where Have All the Students Gone? University Business, 19(7), 32–36).
In America, the 2015 ITC National eLearning Survey found that online learning "[has] accounted for nearly all student enrollment growth at community colleges during the past 11 years". (ITC National eLearning Survey, National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, 2015)
Even with teachers, the growing ways to make an educator stand out among the crowd hunting for jobs has headed to the online world in search for informal certifications to show their merit as educators.
Below are some examples you may wish to pursue in order to advance your own abilities.
Corporate Sponsored Teacher Education Programs
Outside of the crowd-sourced world, we can enter into the corporate world of online training. Rather than a course based approach, these tools are meant as corporate trainers to both promote the company's resources, as well as to train you to use them better in your own practice and life. There are some things to consider when pursuing a corporate training program:
- Direct Applicability to the Classroom: Since these programs are designed for teachers, they have a strong tie to the classroom and your ability to use their products inside their classroom. Often, if you're taking one of these courses, you already have their product in your class.
- Opening of Career Opportunities: With programs like Google Trainer, Innovator, and Apple Distinguished Educator, teachers have an ability to "seperate themselves from the crowd" so to speak, in regards to the tech world. Being recognized by a company that is a technological giant could, in many teachers' minds, open up themselves to have a competitive advantage in the job market.
- Corporate "Initiation": As these programs are developed by corporations, there is a strong presence of branding brainwashing within the courses. Many times, a presented 'problem' is wonderfully solved by the company's own product, and you are encouraged to use as many of the company's products within your practice as possible. The information presented will of course be heavily biased towards the company's spin on an application or product and may not present you with the best possible applications for the job.
- Your School Is Using the Product: Perhaps the strongest reason for taking a corporate education program is that your school already has the product available for use. While these courses are heavily biased towards the product, they do however, do a great job at teaching you the ins-and-outs of the product itself, which could help improve your practice with the tech inside your classroom.
- Networking: Being part of these groups allows you to gain access to other educators who are using technology innovatively within their classrooms, as well as to get an honest view of the tech in a classroom. As other teacher members are not employees of the programs, they can share advice on the best ways to incorporate specific programs into your practice.
G-Suite for Education
While many teachers use Google products inside of their classrooms, many are not aware of the potential power that these tools can hold. As such, Google has released four different certifications to teach you how to use G-Suite for Education in the classroom, train others with the tools, and be recognized as an innovator in the tech field.
While the courses themselves are free for all of Google's offered certifications, if you want to take the test in order to receive a certificate, you will be paying in the range of $24 USD to $35 USD. This is something to consider, and speaks more to Google's potential reasoning behind releasing a certification for their products. If Google released the program altruistically to improve teachers, it stands to reason that a company like Google could do so. This is still a substantial revenue for the company considering how many teachers are certified. That being said, the course content is free, as is using G-Suite for education, so for a nominal fee this may be a worthwhile trade-off in your experience.
- Google Certified Teacher Levels 1 & 2: These short courses teach you how to use G-Suite for education's programs, as well as some ways to incorporate them into your practice
- Google Certified Trainer: If you really know your G-stuff, you can become a certified trainer to show others how to use the products into their classrooms. You'll create a trainer video, complete another course, and if you are accepted, then you'll be added to a training database where schools and companies can contact you to provide in-house training.
- Google Innovator: Be recognized by Google as an influential and innovative classroom teacher with technology, and be able to share with other impressive "Googly" educators. If you're accepted, you'll be flown to an Innovator summit to meet with other teachers and share ideas of using G-Suite tools in the classroom.
Apple Teacher & Apple Distinguished Educator
Similar to Google's Certified Educator, Apple has their own brand of training for teachers called Apple Teacher. As many schools choose the iPad as their technology of choice within their classroom, this may be a logical first step for many teachers who are unsure of how to use an iPad or Mac OS in their classroom (or in general).
The program has several different paths, allowing you to learn about different features of an iPad, Macbook Pro, and also different paths like Apple's coding app, Garageband tutorials, and interactive lessons based on Apple's own applications. Apple also offers a program called Apple Distinguished Educator, where they recognize teachers they deem to be using Apple technology exceptionally within their practice. Similar to Google Innovator, Apple will fly successful applicants from a video application out to a conference where they will get the opportunity to network with other tech savvy teachers.
Unlike Google training however, Apple does not require you to pay in order to apply or take a test in order to receive a designation of being an Apple Teacher.
Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC's)
A MOOC is an online course format with topics in just about anything. They can range from formal education at universities like UBC or U of Edinburgh where topics include Psychology, Databases, and even Chicken Behaviour. Course authors can also be industry professionals, or anyone who has access to a computer and enough time on their hands to develop their own courses. Some MOOCs are better than others, and online MOOC Databases have begun to emerge in the present years to become conglomerates of reputable education courses.
Perhaps the simultaneously best and worst thing about MOOC's are their open format. When presented well, they can be an immense source of knowledge from educational giants in their respective fields. Students can learn from the best, and hopefully, from some of the better teachers who can present strong educational pathways as well. On the flipside, without proper research and vetting of the courses, it is easy for misinformation to spread simply because the website "looks legitimate" or the content presentation is engaging and of high calibre. Without a strong background in education in the first place, I see having a strong engagement with a MOOC course, and what constitutes a strong educator, to be a difficult source for many.