Tech Savvy Mama

Parenting in the Digital Age

Classroom Teacher Takes Teaching Online to a New Group of Students- Parents!

By

Thank you to P&G’s Have You Tried This Yet? program and Kroger for sponsoring my writing about trying new things and breaking out of my everyday routine. Click here to find great savings on high-performing P&G products at a Kroger store near you. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

In the past 15 years that I’ve been a teacher, I’ve taught preschoolers, elementary ages, college students, and adults.  This past fall I took a leave of absence from teaching when I had the opportunity to become BitDefender’s family online safety and security expert for their BitMoms site.  While taking a leave from teaching was a huge departure from a career that was familiar and comfortable, using my knowledge to teach parents about keeping kids safe online was an incredible opportunity that used a variety of different talents from past careers to teach parents about internet safety issues currently affecting families.

Rather than teaching in a school, my instruction became completely virtual. I provided instruction to interested parents through the BitMoms Community, shared topics of interest via blog posts, assembled resources and links as part of my course curriculum, and engaged in discussions via Twitter and Facebook with participants located around the country, instead of being face to face in the classroom.

The absence of a bell in my virtual classroom meant that hours of instruction were no longer dictated by the start and end times of school.  Instead, learning could occur throughout the day and on platforms that weren’t limited to paper and pencil or whole and small group instruction.  Just as in the classroom, discussions were critical to furthering understanding but instead of face to face, they were happening online in the community.
Even though I’m a confident teacher, my work with BitDefender challenged me to use what I knew about providing good instruction and experience creating discourse online in order to teach a new group of students- parents. 
This job was certainly a departure from what I knew and was comfortable with, but was my opportunity to try something different even though I have to admit there are days when I miss being in a school building and teaching elementary age students!

Thanks for reading Tech Savvy Mama through your feed!

Original post by Tech Savvy Mama
©2012