Q2: (For the Mathies out there) What will I need when teaching online courses? Should I get a webcam? What about a bamboo tablet/pad? Is there like some kind of "cyber-whiteboard" for working out math problems? Honestly, I can't see how an online math course could function unless there was some kind of mechanism that allowed the students to see examples being worked out. (I've never taught an online course before so my inexperience adds to my anxiety.)
If it isn't specified, I'd go with a CV. And I don't know what this is, but you could try to try it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/reaction-rates (he does math with it too)
The only online whiteboard I know of at the moment is WiZiQ.com. They no longer have a free-for-starving-adjuncts service, though it's not terribly expensive.
ReplyDeleteCapture pads suck, largely because there's substantial delay involved and you don't get good feedback on where the pen is relative to what you've already marked down.
I teach math online at times. I do not own a webcam. My school uses Desire2Learn as our online medium but Blackboard Collaborate as the place to have virtual office hours. It is exactly what you are looking for: a cyber-whiteboard. It's a big whiteboard space and I talk through the mic but what is seen on the screen is me writing on the whiteboard with my mouse-pen on a bamboo tablet. Since I am looking at the screen but writing on my horizontal tablet my handwriting, which is normally quite neat, ends up looking like a third-grader but my students forgive me. I can also use buttons to point at something I already wrote.
ReplyDeleteIt works really well and is the saving grace of an online math class. The downside is that hardly any students take advantage of it. I hear as many crickets during my online office hours as I do during my campus ones. But it's better because I can do it at home in my pajamas. But I also use it to make recordings of me working out problems which students can view at any time.
Sorry, but we had to swap the graphic. We got an automated email note from Photos.com about the use of the earlier image.
ReplyDeleteMake sure that your resume should be customized and objective should match to the job description. Reverse chronological order is the best format.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sampleresumeobjectives.org/medical-resume-objective-example.html
CVs are almost always preferred for academic jobs. How good your online math course is will depend on what tools are available in the LMS your school has purchased. I don't know enough about free tools, but sometimes schools have policies about your using whatever it is they've paid for. Best to check if they ask you to teach online and then ask colleagues how they work with the concept.
ReplyDeleteI would like to reduce your anxiety by emphasizing that online formats allow you to read a question, take an hour or two to reflect on it, and then post a response. With math in particular, you could use a variety of approaches: word docs with equations and showing your work, or a scanned image of you working it out in your own hand writing, or even an online software like this to finish your thought:
ReplyDeletehttp://teachingcollegemath.com/category/math-software/
For introverts, online teaching is the bees knees. You can think and rethink about phrasing, delete something inelegantly written, figure out precisely how to answer each question without looking like you don't know. It's great.
Most collaborative tools have some sort of screen share feature, which means all you really need to do is get your writing on the screen. This can be accomplished with an external webcam pointing at a piece of paper. You could also record little videos of your self doing the problems and post them on youtube accessible only through a link.
ReplyDeleteIf you're not tied to your handwriting being on the screen, there are free programs that are much better suited for typing equations than a word processors. I'm fond of the LibreOffice suite, but I only occasionally use the formula application.
I'm in a very different field, and it's been over a decade since I applied to part-time jobs, but when I did, I had considerable success with sending out a c.v. that put teaching experience up front (with only education above it). That way, whoever was doing the hiring could see that I had conference presentations, a few publications, etc. if they chose to read the whole thing, but would see the information that mattered most to hir -- where I'd taught, and what -- on the first 1-2 pages.
ReplyDelete