Teach Computer Refurbishing Online

Teaching computer refurbishing with a distance ed approach may seem like a daunting task but it isn't. You will be serving as a co-teacher and mentor with an onsite instructor who may be anything from an experienced beginner to an IT professional themselves. There is plenty of flexibility for you to supply courses in any manner and to any group you prefer but we hope to focus on providing instruction to students in small computer lab environments. Teamwork between yourself and the onsite instructor will be a key component

Teaching Tools

Moodle is our key online teaching tool. The software is designed from the ground up for use in online or distance education situations. There is an excellent community support forum on their site that can get you up to speed on its use in no time. Moodle enables the inclusion of various teaching resources in the course.

Audio-visual can be useful too so the creation of audio - visual teaching segments is encouraged. Since bandwidth is usually a limiting factor this is not an issue of streaming but rather saving these audio - visuals to archives for download by the remote site.

The use of Skype is encouraged. It has tremendous audio capabilities, even at low bandwidth and has the added advantage it can be used like a regular telephone.

AJAX is a webpage building method I have used to create a custom online presentation method very much like a Power Point presentation. It is available for teachers also but requires a little training in its use which I can provide.

Expectations

If you would be interested in serving in such a capacity it would probably be best you come with an attitude of 90% preparation and 10% actual teaching. This is a brand new startup and there are many things that need to be prepared before the launch of actual courses. The Instructor would be expected to design their own courses, which means they need to familiarize themselves with Moodle (as mentioned there is an awesome support community at Moodle). the Moodle software itself is very stable and well established. There is an installation of Moodle on the VirtualMissions site where instructors have access for training, building and even conducting their courses. It may prove advantageous in some circumstances to actually host the Moodle software at the remote computer lab and have the instructors teach from that remote server. Course would be expected to be topical so any commitment by an instructor would be for the period of time when the course is offered. We do ask that the courses created be donated to VirtualMissions for possible reuse by other instructors.