How to Create a Cyber School
If you have teaching expertise or even if you simply want a valuable, meaningful website, creating your own online school represents the possibility of recruiting students worldwide to learn whatever material you want to teach. Whether you operate the "school" yourself as an online home school teacher or whether you recruit different teachers with different areas of expertise, you can build a cyber learning environment and start enrolling students today.
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Instructions
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Select an education portal or learning management system (LMS) like Moodle, A Tutor or Flex Training. Open-source programs Moodle and A Tutor offer educators free resources to develop classes, administration systems and testing centers. Flex Training provides similar services as Moodle and A Tutor but requires purchase. All LMS programs offer you the ability to operate an entire online school complete with home, registration and information pages, along with online testing and reporting.
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Customize your LMS homepage to include the subject(s) your cyber school. From traditional classes like English or math to fiction writing, cartooning or illustration, you need to convey to visitors what subjects they will learn at your school.
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Obtain state teaching certification or recruit state-licensed teachers for traditional K-12 subjects by visiting websites like University of Kentucky's Teacher Certification Directory (see Resources) that provides access to each state's teacher certification requirements. By obtaining the requisite education, such as a Bachelor's degree in the subject, along with state teaching certification, you can market your certification and compete successfully with other online schools.
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Research the techniques of quality online teaching by reading such publications as "Teaching at an Internet Distance: The Pedagogy of Online Teaching and Learning" or "Interactive Ethics Training," available at online government research libraries like NCIC (see Resources). As important as subject expertise, knowing the techniques of effective online teaching and learning will ensure your students actually learn the subjects you want to teach in your cyber school.
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State your mission on the Mission page. Students like knowing why your school exists, and your mission statement conveys that reason. The mission statement also helps you by focusing on exactly what you want to teach and keeps you from losing focus by offering additional, unrelated subjects.
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Develop tests using your LMS. Each LMS offers you the tools needed to create quizzes and tests as well as textbooks that provide your students the study material they need. Organize this information by dividing it into "classes" that you can organize in an directory "academic handbook." Quizzes and tests can range from simple true-false questions and multiple choice to fill-in-the-blank or essays.
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Offer free training to a sample class, so students can get the feel of your school. Although every school offers different subjects and has different teachers, the LMS determines much of the online learning experience. Make sure to get your students excited about learning via your LMS by offering them the opportunity to take test classes.
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Visit websites like Webinar.com, WebEx or Skype that offer you the ability to create conference call--style classes via streaming video of lectures. Through live, online lectures, you can teach one student or entire classes and interact with students via video feed and speaker phone.
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Videotape your lectures and offer an online archive of lectures your teachers have provided. By creating an archive of online classes, you can charge per course or develop a program consisting of multiple courses.
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Join a teacher's network like Teachers Network or Illinois Online Network (see Resources) for a list of effective no-cost learning activities you can offer through your school
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