Welcome to Advanced Instructional Strategies in the Virtual Classroom! This course will help you apply strategies to the critical areas of K-12 virtual instruction to significantly impact virtual education. We will examine the pitfalls beginning teachers run into and learn how to overcome them by focusing on the fundamentals that have the greatest impact on student learning in a blended or online environment. By the end of the course, you will be able to empower your students to be voracious learners who are ready to go out and make the world a better place to live. Upon completing this course, you will be able to: • Identify the role of direct instruction within a virtual course. • Establish direct communication and meaningful relationships with your students.  • Use instructional strategies that motivate and challenge your students to think more critically. • Define at-risk students and examine effective strategies for teaching this demographic. • Build an inclusive and thriving online community with students, parents, and other teaching professionals.

Powerful Tools for Teaching and Learning: Digital Storytelling introduces educators to digital storytelling and explores ways to use digital stories to enhance students’ learning experiences. The course is designed to be comprehensive yet fundamental. By comprehensive we mean that the course provides a solid foundation for all of the components of a digital story and illustrates these components with tutorials, example stories, and links to additional readings. The course also provides a hands-on opportunity for learners to create their own digital stories. The course is fundamental because it covers the basic process of creating a digital story starting with just a simple script and as little as one image. This course is intended for K-12 teachers in all disciplines, although it is open to anyone with an interest in digital storytelling. Course participants will use WeVideo (https://www.wevideo.com/), a free web-based video editing program, to create a digital story that could be shared both online and with students in the classroom. Teachers in the state of Texas may be eligible to receive Continuing Professional Education units if they complete the major requirements of the course.

In this course you will learn about a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools to use in your teaching and learning. Web 2.0 tools provide innovative ways to communicate, present content, and collaborate with others in creative ways. Web 2.0 tools are easy to learn, use, and implement, and many are free. This course will not only introduce you to popular Web 2.0 tools like Edmodo, Twitter, Voicethread, and Skype in K-16 instruction, but you will also learn how to effectively integrate these technologies into your classroom practices and create engaging student activities.

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The course examines specific strategies for community organizing for social justice in a diverse, democratic society. It examines core concepts of social justice and practical steps for bringing people together to set goals and priorities, assess community assets and needs, develop action plans, and build support for implementation. It includes information on how to form core groups, build organizational capacity, and formulate strategy for reaching out to constituents and allies. Because each person learns in a different way, the course features a variety of learning acclivities, information on successful programs, individual instructions , and small group exercises, as well as hands-on materials for problem solving and program planning, You can use these activities with individuals, with a small group of people, or with several groups in a community campaign. The course draws upon work with people who are striving for community change in metropolitan Detroit, and area which is becoming both more segregated and more diverse. But it is designed for people who want to create change in communities, everywhere. If you were to take the course with ideas in mind, and conclude with plans in hand, then our purpose will be served.

Have you ever wondered how playing games can help us to train people, deal with societal challenges or raise awareness of contemporary social issues? In this MOOC you will learn the ins and outs of games that are designed with exactly those purposes in mind: serious games. We will define serious games and discuss the different types that have been developed. We will explain why people like to play them and what impact they may have. State of the art theories from game studies, philosophy and media psychology will be used to help you understand how serious games work and how they appeal to players. The potential impact of gaming is addressed in detail by discussing persuasive games, which aim at changing the player's attitude. Throughout the MOOC, theoretical insights will be illustrated with playful animations and case studies of serious games that are developed by world-class companies in the city of Rotterdam. This MOOC is particularly interesting for you when you are a student considering to study digital media such as serious games, a professional interested in the opportunities these games may create for your organization, or a game developer who wants to know more about the impact serious games can have. Note that this MOOC will not teach you how to design a serious game. Watch the teaser for this MOOC here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqjY1KSsEx8 Are you ready to broaden your vision on serious games? Join this course and be inspired!

We are presently facing a potential extinction crisis for the order Primates (and many other life forms). In this course we will learn about threats to primate conservation globally. We will be using the, “Primates in Peril: The World’s 25 Most Endangered Primates 2018-2020” by Schwitzer et al. (2019) as a basis for the discussion of global primate populations. We will investigate conservation status, threats to conservations, success and failures within protecting our closest evolutionary cousins.

Developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress will provide participants with the knowledge, skills, and strategies to understand and manage their emotions and those of their students. The 10-hour online course is designed for school staff, including teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, principals, and non-teaching staff in preK-12 schools.

Are you an educator? Have you ever wanted to understand more about how to design your class to make better use of educational technology – whether fully online or in blended contexts? Would you like to learn from those who have extensive practical experience with online technologies? The Learning to Teach Online (LTTO) MOOC will help you develop a working understanding of successful online teaching strategies that you can apply in your own practice. The course is based upon the multi award winning open educational resource developed by Dr Simon McIntyre and Karin Watson. Integrating online technologies into your teaching can be a challenging prospect, and it can be difficult to know how to approach it effectively for the benefit of both students and yourself. No one knows your own content and teaching strengths better than you, and the “one size fits all” formula doesn’t always suit everyone. No matter what type of technology you are interested in exploring or your level of experience, this course will help you draw on your teaching strengths and find the approach that is right for you, your students and your educational context. This course will guide you through your journey of understanding how online technologies can enhance your course design. You will have the opportunity to develop your understanding of effective online teaching practices and their relationship to the use of different technologies. You will also be encouraged to progressively design and reflect upon your own online learning activity, assessment or resource for use in your own class if you choose to undertake the course assignments.

In the education of children with visual impairment, there is at present a global movement away from segregated special schooling, and towards inclusive neighbourhood schools. Inclusion provides an opportunity for everyone, teachers as well as learners, to become more acquainted about life with visual impairment and to overcome some of the barriers of difference which have existed in the past. But if it is to be successful, teachers and others require key skills and insights in order to create classroom environments which fully accommodate the learning needs of children with visual impairment. In this course, you will discover the visually impaired child by recognizing that there are many different eye conditions and that each affects learning and behavior differently. During the course, we will explore the Expanded Core Curriculum, which is a collection of content areas that teachers integrate into the core curriculum to give visually impaired learners access to knowledge that sighted learners gain through observation. You will also learn how to make your classroom, the content, your teaching, and the assessments accessible through curriculum differentiation strategies. By the end of the course you will have the necessary tools to create empowering classrooms where you can teach children with visual impairment in an inclusive, accessible, and attuned space. You will be able to purchase a Verified Certificate if you wish to show evidence of your achievements, but this is optional, and you may apply for Financial Aid if you are unable to pay the certificate fee.