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3/10/2008
Educational professionals may not be keeping up with their corporate counterparts in implementing technology in their workplace. The reasons vary but include lack of access to current technologies, fear of technology and lowered funding and administrative support.
By all accounts, the most effective way for educators to become more tech savvy is to experiment. Educators can get started by fulfilling their continuing education requirements online. Many organizations offer continuing education opportunities to educators online using a spectrum of technologies.
National CEU is a continuing education provider that offers online, video-streamed seminars to educators and education specialists (speech-language pathologists, school psychologists, para-professionals, school administrators) nation-wide. According to National CEU President, Franklin Bender, "Incorporating quality online continuing education is a natural way to get educators interested in and more familiar with technology. Once we can get an educator to give the video-streaming technology a chance, they love it. After they've selected a continuing education seminar, it takes less than 2 minutes for an existing customer to make their purchase and begin watching the video seminar from their computer. It's simple. It's enjoyable."
As with any product, quality standards differ with each online continuing education offering. So, how can an educator discern a high quality online continuing education product from an inferior one? Bender offers the following suggestions:
- "Find a continuing education product that is cross-platform (you can use a PC or a Mac) that doesn't require you to download complicated software or hardware.
- Make sure you can test out a sample of the continuing education method before purchasing it to ensure it's compatible with your computer.
- Look for a tutorial of the product if you're unsure of its complexity.
- Contact the company. A good company will bend over backward to make sure you get the experience you're looking for and will explain things to you patiently, in terms that you can understand.
- Check with your continuing education licensing body to make sure they will accept online offerings. Most do, but some limit the amount of hours they will accept in a given time period.
- And, most importantly, ask yourself if the medium is interesting and engaging to you. For some people, reading text online or listening to audio alone is not enough to hold their attention even if it does meet their continuing education requirements."
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