iTeacherWorld has been around since 2006, supporting much of the educational work of the Maremel Institute, which has been working on professional development for K-12 teachers in live programs.  We have worked to make resources easy to understand, especially free and open source materials for connected classrooms.

New Focus

We’re changing our focus now in 2012.  There has been so much emphasis on online vs. blended vs. traditional classrooms, with much of the dialog removed from pedagogy of how to create a great context-rich learning environment.  We are working to build new programs for post-secondary institutions, and are beginning pilots on how to rethink the “why” of course design.

If you have all the flexibility of time and place, instead of constraints for four walls and a class session — what would you design?  How can teachers engage best-of-breed ideas in Communities of Inquiry in a blended classroom?  How can we rethink grading?  Rubrics?  Feedback?  Dreaded (and often empty) office hours?  How can we learn from MOOCs how to rethink how to teach “live” and “local”?  How can I connect my Los Angeles classroom with yours in Spain?  Or in Japan?

How do I rethink what I’d like my students to learn?

THAT will be the emphasis of iTeacherWorld in 2012.  Please join us on @iTeacherWorld on Twitter, our Higher Ed Tech Change Twitter List, Facebook, and here by RSS, as well as our NetVibes dashboard with Maremel at http://www.netvibes.com/maremel#ED_Tech.  We’re gathering pieces of a broad puzzle — how to change our minds on how to teach in a perpectually connected world?

You also can contact us to join us further in this adventure.  Stay tuned for upcoming programs, modules, questionnaires, and other goodies as we walk down this road together.