Washington, DC -- (SBWIRE) -- 12/22/2010 -- Global Academy Online, Inc., international online university builders, has launched a new program for skilled individuals who are not professional teachers. The Academy offers to teach them to offer their expertise online to a worldwide audience. They will be provided their own teaching platform for free. The Academy is asking in return a pledge from the new teachers that they will offer part of that new online teaching ability to people in need of improved skills for free. This, the Academy refers to as the perfect quid pro quo i.e. something for something.
Five years ago Global Academy Online launched the first free create-at-will online education platform for professionals. It gave college faculty and K-12 teachers the independence from any school unrestricted access to personally own, create, develop, and load as many of their classes as they could onto the Academy’s specially designed course management system. In turn, the system is capable of parsing out those creations to any recognized online system in the world to be used by the teacher and the institution that hired them to teach classes online. Today, after having successfully trained online faculty on five continents, the Academy is making this same professional program available to the public.
The unique program is offered through the Academy’s course management systems division, Powered By Global (PBG). According to Elizabeth Cooper, managing director, the new program is designed to permit unskilled non-educators the ability to learn to use and create personalized classes online through use of PBG’s specially designed course management platform. It includes all the same tools of its sophisticated university learner and course management systems now in use at universities and schools around the world.
“Getting started” Cooper observes, “is as simple as 1,2,3. We make sure the new teacher can create and load their courses online.” Some, she says can do it literally within hours of sign up. The academy estimates there are at least one million or more potential skilled teachers who are non-paid in America alone. She points out this reservoir of talent has never set foot in, or taught, in a traditional classroom but possess incredible knowledge and skills they can share and teach to others online. Director Cooper says, “We provide the newly discovered teacher the direction and assistance to make it all possible.”
To enter the program, an individual fills out a brief application to determine if their skills can be communicated and taught effectively online. They then schedule sessions online with PBG at their convenience. The new teachers are provided the latest technology to traverse the ‘learn-to-teach protocol’ and become competent to provide chat, video, audio, live presentations, and social networking capabilities for their future students or trainees. Many other technical innovations, to numerous to mention according to Cooper, are available to the fledgling online instructors. “We want them to grow in expertise and comfort in using our system while we provide the assistance to get them comfortable and confident with it.
“The program is totally free, just as the one we launched for faculty and professional teachers years ago” states Dr. Fred DiUlus, the CEO and founder of Global Academy Online. “What is absolutely terrific about being able to offer our learner teaching system to the public now” DiUlus says, “is our system has matured to a point where we can provide an unskilled online instructor all the tools that will potentially create new opportunities for them and jobs for their students.” Teacher specialties, DiUlus points out, include literally everything from auto mechanics to plumbing, fishing to farming, welding to making tool dies. “If the skill exists,” he says, “it can be taught online.”
Information regarding the Academy’s new free program opportunity can be found on the Powered By Global website.