NSW HSC Online Professional Development Node
Home > NSW HSC Online Professional Development Node
What is teaching and learning online?
Online teaching and learning basically involves information and communication technologies (ICT) which you use to deliver and receive education via the Internet or World Wide Web. The online environment provides you with a range of tools that you can use to enhance or support new instructional strategies. You can either use the available technologies and resources on the Web and integrate them into your curriculum or create your own online resources. The main features of online teaching and learning are access to a vast array of people and information in a rich multisensory environment and the possibility of creating a community of learners through communication tools such as forums (or bulletin boards), chat, and webconferencing. The Internet and the Web lets you take your students to places they would not normally be able to visit and gives them access to information that was previously unavailable to the majority of learners.
Before we go into any detail perhaps you’d like to have a look at the kinds of resources that are available on the Internet. These may give you some indication of the possibilities of online teaching and learning.
As you can see by visiting some of these sites online teaching and learning enables you and your students to:
- visit museums, libraries, art galleries and other locations anywhere in the world
- receive authentic and otherwise inaccessible educational resources from libraries, museums, encyclopedias and media organisations around the world
- exchange or view scientific research data and talk to scientists from the Simpson desert, the Parkes telescope, or NASA by email or on forums
- choose your own path in learning by discovering content yourself or working through content in your own way
- experience multiple paths of understanding through the use of graphics, sound, video and interaction
- build a community with other teachers and learners interested in the same subject
- conduct experiments in safety and have the virtual experience of using equipment that you would not normally have access to
- experience a rich learning environment which is engaging and presented in a variety of ways to cater for different learning styles
Back to Teaching and Learning Online
|