Archive for December, 2010
Most teachers hate getting a substitute teacher for their class because it is so much work to get prepared for the substitute. Since many districts have gone to the automated sub finder system the teacher is also never sure who will be their substitute and that worries them because the wrong substitute teacher can make more work for the regular teacher. So if you are going to substitute then you need to go in prepared to help the teacher and maintain control of the class.
If a substitute teacher doesn’t follow through with lesson plans and discipline it can louse up the regular teachers class for a day or two. I know this because I taught for thirty seven years and then started to substitute after retirement so I now can talk about both sides.
Here are some hints to be a successful substitute teacher. Remember maintaining control of the class is of the main importance.
The first tip is to go in with your won simple discipline plan, just in case the teacher’s plan is too complicated and too detailed to get acquainted with in a short time. Take time at the beginning of class to explain your plan, the consequences, and the reward. Example: I put ten tally marks on the board and explain that I expect them to be the best students they can be. If they shout, interrupt or break the classroom rules I will erase a mark for each time. If they are rude to me or another class member I will erase 2 or more marks.
I explain that they are a team so they can help their team win or lose. I explain that I know that no one is perfect so they will probably loose marks, but if there are any marks left at the end of the day they will be rewarded with ten to fifteen minutes of playing a game if we can accomplish ‘nearly’ everything the teacher has assigned. I say ‘nearly’ because some teachers will give a lot to do just to keep the students busy.
Then I start the day. When I erase a mark I do it quietly, but make sure most of the students see me do it. I usually explain why the mark was erased such as “some one is talking while I am.” The game I choose to play is not seven up or a game they usually play, although they do love four corners.
Number two is to always have something they can do if they finish early. I usually run two geometric designs and have them color one using monochromatic colors (all blues etc) and the other one using only primary colors. This is explained at the beginning of the day so that they may work on them when their assignments are completed. If they work on them when their assigned work is not complete I will erase a mark.
Number three tip is to follow the teachers lesson plans and leave short notes like “Completed” or “they need some more time to complete this” or “I told them to take it home as homework and bring it back tomorrow” or “Reading and Spelling took too long so I skipped English”. I usually give them just 2 or 3 minutes less time to complete than the teacher says so that we will have some extra time at the end of the day to play our game. If they loose all the marks then they use this time to complete assignments.
If you do not follow the teacher’s plans it may hurt their time schedule to accomplish units, etc. It is their class and you need to respect that having the students maintain their normal routine will help you maintain discipline and help the regular teacher stay on schedule.
As a substitute I teach concepts my way because I am not used to the scripts that a lot of books are using now and I don’t like just reading everything to the students. Most teachers will be okay with this.
Tip four is that maintaining discipline and control of the students is the most important thing you can do. As a teacher I cared less about how much of the work was done and more about how well the students behaved. If they behave well then I did not have to waste time handling a lot of problems when I returned, but I could just start where the substitute left off.
The last time is that at the end of the day I am sure to follow through and reward the students with 10 to 15 minutes of game time. Do not forget this because it is important that the students receive what you promised them at the beginning of the day.
If you follow these 5 points it will make your time as a substitute much more enjoyable and helpful the teachers and the students you are working for. You will probably even be invited back.
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Teachers arguably have one of the most challenging and rewarding jobs, all at once. The following list should help you to keep your career in perspective, as well as infuse your students with an openness and desire to learn.
Prepared But Flexible
The most effective teachers create lesson plans in advance, know their subject well and have all of their teaching supplies on hand. However, these teachers are also flexible.
Never sacrifice true learning for time lines, even if it throws your schedule slightly awry. If your students are genuinely interested in delving deeper into a topic or if they need extra help understanding a new concept, be flexible enough to realize that your lesson is a guideline rather than a rigid structure.
Project Kindness
Especially for young children, a little warmth and nurturing go a long way. Keep in mind the emotional and mental maturity of your students. Little things like a smile, eye contact or a handshake at the start of the day may be all it takes to shake off a grumpy early morning and open them up to learning.
Establish Class Rules
To ensure that children know exactly what is expected of them in your class, use the first week of school to establish class rules. Post them where they can be seen and review them often. Especially during the first week of school, encourage your students to discuss the rules and gauge their understanding.
Plan for Disciplinary Problems
Be clear that not every student will act how you want them to all of the time. To maintain an environment conducive to learning, have a clear plan for how you will deal with disciplinary problems. This will be somewhat dictated by school protocol, but once you get to know the individuals in your classroom, you will be better able to assess what types of discipline tactics you will need to employ.
Enthusiasm is Contagious
Find ways to breathe life into each lesson and convey your sense of enthusiasm and passion for the subject to your students. Like the cliche about finding the silver lining, even with subjects you’re genuinely less interested in, find some angle that excites you and run with it. Your students will reflect your emotion and enthusiasm.
Develop a Sense of Humor
Pull out your sense of humor at any difficult moment: when your students are running wild, when the class is chaotic, when you’re stressed, overworked and uninspired. When things don’t go as planned, keeping a sense of humor will not only rub off on your students, but it may teach them something more valuable than the lesson material.
Interact with Your Students
Students who feel that you’re interested in who they are and what is going on in their personal lives are usually more open to learning from you. By interacting with your students and getting to know them, you invite them to embark on an educational adventure, instead of just sitting in a chair listening to you talk each day.
Listening Skills
Speaking of listening, you should model good listening skills for your students. Because you spend so much time talking, it is sometimes easy to forget that your job is also to listen.
Constant Improvement
Whether you read trade magazines, teaching blogs or take enrichment classes, never stop looking for ways to improve your craft.
Keeping a healthy perspective will make you a better teacher. These tips, used wisely, will make the job of teaching more rewarding for you and for those you teach.
Balance
As with any job it’s extremely important to have a good balance between your work and personal life. If you spend all of your free time working on grading papers and coming up with new lesson plans then you need to make an effort to set aside free time to spend with family and friends. It’s too easy to get bogged down with work and be completely consumed by it. Next time you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed take a look at how you’re spending your time and see if you have a good balance between your work and personal life.
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As the computer age rolls on we are encountering more and more universities that are willing to invest in the education of pupils who may not necessarily be in a place to attend classes at that particular institution of higher education. The offerings are still somewhat restricted but there are chances to get associates, bachelors, and also master’s degrees strictly through online course work. This is something that was practically extraordinary even a few years ago.
These days’s pupils truly do have more choices presented to them than ever before if they are disposed to put in the time and strength into their studies, there are few restrictions to the level of education you can receive, even if it has been years since you last went to a university or community college. Even those colleges and universities that do not present full fledged diploma programs wholly through online learning methods are beginning to offer majority of programs on the web for students with tiring schedules and lifestyles. This means that you now have the occasion to blend distance or online learning with a few night or weekend programs in order to end your degree even if you have a full time day employment and folks that needs to discuss with you at home on occasion.
With online classes it does not matter if you are in your pajamas or in a suit and tie you can still do the work you suppose to do on the internet and no one will be the wiser. You also might find that you can slot in your education into your lunch hour, especially if you can type and chew at the same time. The truth is that online classes offer better flexibility to those hoping to further their education. Whether you’re eager to get hold of a diploma or simply desire to broaden your horizons by taking one or two online classes, you just might find that the potential are limitless once you commence taking these courses from your residence.
Even if a diploma is not something you are essentially seeking you might be amazed at the large array of programs that are presented for those enticed by enlarging their depth of awareness on different matters from the convinience of their own homes
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For adults who are very much busy with work but would like to go back to school, their option is to go online. Distance education is a form of online schooling, which could work for people who want to take courses in specific schools but cannot be physically present to attend classes. Here are some online education tips to consider.
The trick for a student of distance education is to treat the process as if it were a favorite hobby. This will make it more enjoyable to do and could help one become more inspired to finish it.
To get most of the distance education, a student must not stick to the memorization technique to swing any test. He must fully understand the lesson so that he need not rely on the exact words that make up a definition or a theory, he can explain it in his words if need be.
Assignments are given for a reason and that reason is for the student to make some research about a topic if necessary learn and understand the concepts and apply to the assignment. All assignments should be treated like they’re work and there’s a deadline to beat, and the boss won’t be happy about mediocre results.
Learn to look at the course on a macro level and don’t just focus on the bits and pieces individually. Know each part and learn how to process them all together so that as a whole, it makes sense to you. Knowing how to handle the information gathered from the lessons can help the student apply the theories to practical use.
To succeed in any course taken under a distance education scheme, remember to digest the significant things or data and establish how these are all connected.
Adults who need online education tips would probably be most concerned about these factors that affect their studies very much – time, stress, and expectations.
Time is always of the essence especially where distance education is concerned. Most of the people who enroll are busy professionals and they have to learn to manage their time properly to make room for their schooling. If you have enrolled in a course, make sure you dedicate some time for it. Yes, you may have saved some time by not commuting or traveling to the school, but you still have to plan your work and school schedules so that you can maintain a good balance of the two.
Check how much time is really needed in your studies by checking how much work is required from your end.
One of the more important among all education tips that which covers stress management. With so much work in the office and so much work too, in school via the distance education, a person could get stressed out or drained easily if he won’t be able to manage it well.
Plan things ahead and watch the deadlines. Avoid cramming as much as possible since this really adds up and besides, last-minute work won’t really do any wonders in the distance education setting.
Understand the expectations to be met so you can gauge how you will go about them. Read the syllabus, talk to the instructor, and ask a lot of questions. Communication is very important online.
These education tips will surely help the adults who are planning to go back to the school scene via distance education. It should be noted that like in the traditional school setting, studying and determination to finish or graduate, make up the success formula too.
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Online and distance learning is the new kind of education that is growing immensely all over the world. It is the kind of learning that is done over the internet across different countries and even across different continents. Students who want to learn on a flexible schedule, such as professionals already involved in regular jobs, often prefer online learning over the traditional type of classroom and face to face learning which account for the increasing popularity of this kind of educational program.
However, partly because of its fairly early stage of development, online and distance learning has not yet been structured to fit everyone. There are a few basic attributes that one must possess to be better suited at learning through online classes.
The most important characteristic that is needed to succeed in distance education is the ability to stay motivated and focused on a task without the need for external encouragement from others such as a teacher or classmates. An online education student must be able to motivate himself, set his own goals, and track his own progress.
A successful online student should also be very aggressive and very zealous in completing his online assignments and projects. Procrastination will never work well in online and distance education. It is true that online learning lets students work at their own pace and on their own time, which many take to mean that procrastinating is ok. However, this would also mean that several months or even years would probably be added to the total time that the student will need to complete the course.
Another vital characteristic for online and distance education students is very good reading and comprehension abilities. Although there are some lessons that are covered by video lectures, most of the learning will still be through reading a lot of written text. Thus, students who learn best by taking notes in class and asking questions from a lecturer will probably not do well in an online and distance education setting.
Students who want to try online learning should also have a very high sense of focus that enables them to shake off distractions easily. Studying an entire course at home means that there will be a lot of times when family members and children could easily become interruptions in learning. There will also be times that turning on the tv and enjoying the live broadcast of a game could be very alluring. All of these disturbances should be easily filtered out by a student who wants to be successful at completing a course online.
Lastly, online students should also understand that one of the biggest differences between an online class and traditional face to face class is the element of social interaction. Online and distance learning set-ups provide very little of this element because there are no such things as a school dance, a varsity game, or even a student government and elections in this kind of educational program. Online and distance learning students should be able to satisfy this part of education on their own: either by having extracurricular activities outside the online learning structure, or by being able to discuss and expound on what they are learning with their friends and coworkers.
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Online institutions, and specifically online institutions of higher learning are still, after the first appearance in 1974, still few and far between. Many of those online are either “Diploma Mills”, or just outright scams perpetrated against a believing public, willing to spend thousands of dollars on quality education they never receive. This happens in traditional learning, as well. Who is going to butt their head up against a “brick and mortar” institution, demanding the quality education paid for?
Online learning is more difficult and challenging to the serious student, which makes it an appropriate fit for the highly motivated student. As a result, the online learning opportunity tends to pull in better, higher qualified students.
Online learning tends to be much more intense, yet intimate for the online learner. The focus is on facilitation, not “pure” education. The online learner is left to their own determination, study habits, and expectations of success to fuel their education. In traditional education, this is neither required nor (in most cases) expected. “Just get the grade!” is the clarion call in traditional education. That roughly translates into “Just pay the tuition!”, unfortunately. There is some of this in the online education business as well, but not nearly as much.
Online study is much more concentrated, cheaper, with shorter course times than traditional learning, affording short blocks of concentrated time of study and learning, with larger spaces for breaks between courses. The online learner tends to take no more than three courses simultaneously (with two being the recommended maximum) that are “interest related”. There is a minimum of general study requirements, with much more focus on the topic the student wishes to study. You pay for what you need, avoiding what “they” want to teach you.
Finally, the economic expense of traditional learning has killed it. Internet and online learning is shorter in duration, much more focused on final outcomes, and much less expensive for the student who must pay their own way. Staying at home, working full time, while still earning recognition in quality courses give the serious student not a degree from Yale (although you certainly can earn degrees online), but rather real, usable education that results in the job of your dreams.
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People now understand the significance of higher education in their lives. This is the reason why there has been a considerable growth in the number of students opting for higher distance education in India. In fact, India is experiencing a service led growth in the recent past. The growth in the number of institutions in India has been spectacularly fast. The number of universities has increased to double the number and the enrollment of students is even more than that. Seeing this, lot of measures has been taken to make further improvements in the education system, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
The educational system in India has wide range of subjects and fields of education today. Students of all levels and from all sections of society can come forward and achieve the type of education he or she wants to have. As this is one side of the coin, the other side shows illiteracy prevailing in certain parts of India too. The government is trying to encourage students and adults to give importance to education as this will help them have a better life. The present generation will be able to give a superior future to their next generation. There needs to be awareness among people and only then there will be real development.
To take necessary steps, master degree courses through online and distance learning programs has been introduced in considerable numbers. Many students who live in remote areas or in those small towns where there is no facility or approach for higher education, they are taking advantage of the distance learning courses. They are familiar with the fact that a master’s degree in any subject will help them have an improved salary or open new and better job opportunities for them.
Several universities and institutes are there to help dedicated and committed students achieve their academic dreams. The most remarkable advantage of these online degree courses is that a number of adults are able to accomplish their scholastic desires. Some have improved and added up new qualifications to their resumes and got benefited as well. They have also enhanced their status in family and society.
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Online scholarships are a saving grace in these days of the never-ending escalations in prices and the resultant decrease in purchasing power. Even well-to-do families are finding it difficult to admit their children in the most coveted institutions, and then can we imagine the plight of the lesser fortunate ones who strive to make ends meet?
This is where scholarships come as a saving grace. There are as many online scholarships as there are people. The only thing is that there is lack of awareness about these.
These are easy to operate because all details regarding registration forms, processing details, mode of payment, etc and all that is required from you are your basic details for authenticity. Some providers do this to encourage students and help deserving candidates, others do this as a publicity stunt.
There are various scholarships for different disciplines like arts, science, law, sports, etc and they range from the age group of children right from kindergarten up to even post graduate programmes. The websites provide accurate information on specified areas so that candidates can save time and energy going through unnecessary details.
Online scholarships and children scholarship funds open grand doors of opportunities for lots of people who due to financial constraints, are not able to pursue further education. Most of these scholarships offer almost 50% concessions for parents which is a huge sum.
Scholarship tests are also available online. This makes it easier for candidates, and saves the problem for travelling distances to write tests at various centres. These tests make it easy to know the child’s aptitude and capability, and hence take a decision as to what direction to take in order to groom them better.
These tests are highly competitive to merit the deserving students. It is also a matter of pride to tell everyone that they got a scholarship to study. This is a great motivation for students and helps them to work harder, make use of more such opportunities and climb the ladder of success.
There are several online scholarship tests and funds which are ready to support students of all kinds with various talents and that too with easy access. They offer scholarships not only in India but also in reputed institutions abroad. It is up to students to be more aware about these opportunities and be the early bird in making the best out of it for their future.
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Living your life with no sense of purpose and future isn’t the way to live, I know that from first hand experience. One day while checking out my options for schooling, I found that the National Education Center had over 800 options and possible plans for each individual. This caught my attention and I just had to let them come up with a plan for me.
The process in itself took no time at all, maybe a few minutes and a click or two at most. Once they had processed my information, the National Education Center came up with the perfect plan for my future! Not only had all of the effort been taken away from looking for a the right education center, but it had been done with class that I’ve found to be unparalleled.
Enjoying what I’m doing, and enjoying it for a long time were my only ideas/plans for my future. National Education Center proved to me that anything is possible, as now my purpose in life feels meaningful as it did before I fell into an idea-less rut. If I can move on, and figure out my future with National Education Centers, then so can you! What do you have to lose? Nothing, the only thing you have to lose in a few minutes of your time, and surely you can spare a few minutes of your time to see if they find the right path for your success. Using the plan that National Education Center provides success is just around the corner.
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Higher education in India is gasping for breath at a time when India is aiming to be an important player in growing knowledge economy. With a huge network of about 300 universities and deemed universities, over 15,000 colleges and hundreds of national and regional research institutes, Indian higher education and research sector is the third largest in the world, in terms of the number of students it is catering.
However, not even single Indian University/Institute (with exception of IITs ranked at 41) finds a mention in a recent international ranking of the top 200 universities of the world.
On the other hand, it is also equally true that there is no single arena and sector in the world remaining untouched that is not being benefited (directly or indirectly) by Indian alumni from prestigious universities, colleges and institutes such as IITs, IIMs, RECs, and much more. The success mantra of Indian professionals has been sung time and again in world’s most reputed organizations like NASA, IBM, Dell, Microsoft, Intel etc.
With changing equations in economy and corporate structure world over, classrooms have turned into the grounds of practical training, emphasizing on both individual and group performances.
Hence, education system has come a long way from being obligatory to be a graduate to moving into various arrays of vocations leading him/her to the dream job. Education has become an industry by itself, providing immense job opportunities to freshers, who foray the arena of potential job market.
With more and more Multi National Companies investing in India, the craze for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has undergone upfront boom in metropolitan and cosmopolitan townships. New companies are turning their eyes in this sector each day; with the existing companies recording rapid growth pattern at an unabated rate. The current scenario in the Indian BPO industry has diversified its attributes in number of ways and channels, from the old and existing businesses. Even its nearest competitor, IT industry shares only a few features.
The most potent features making BPO sector distinct from other industries include:
Reach: BPO industry has reached masses. Any college degree holder can be employed in this sector.
Customers: The customers of BPO industry range from diversified arenas that include mobile companies, banks, healthcare companies, insurance companies and much more.
Infrastructure: To keep people motivated against the erratic work environment, BPOs are paying very high salary packages (INR 15,000 TO 50,000) as compared to other industries. Such high salary structures are offered to individuals despite their lower educational and professional qualifications.
Training: Those employed in a BPO sector undergo rigorous monitoring and training schedules which are of world class standards, and enhance the working capabilities of an under graduate or a graduate beyond distinction.
Quality: Driven by the customers, the Indian BPO industry like the other industries has started moving into the quality certifications like COPC, ISO9002 and BS7799. It further includes the tough standards that the service providers are required to achieve on regular basis.
Recruitment: Taking BPO industry on whole, the sector is recruiting best manpower at the entry level from diversified streams. Following this, the industry is putting them in a world class environment, training them at international standards and preparing them for their customers at international levels.
BPO Industry 10 Years From Now: According to a survey done by Business Standards almost 90% staff of a well known BPO was replaced in a year’s time. This proves that the retention power of BPO is very less and thus the industry is recruiting newer talents on regular basis.
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