When I became a museum educator, I had very little knowledge of what it took to be an “educator”. Let’s face it, most of us museum educators are skilled in history or art but few of us have extensive training in education. Some of us even ended up with this job by default because no one else in the museum wanted the extra headache of creating programs based on rigid state or national academic standards. Because I want to be a better educator, I am constantly seeking ways to educate myself. Therefore, I was excited when I recently learned of an online professional development program provided by PBS called TeacherLine. The site hosts a variety of 6-week courses geared to K-12 schoolteachers; however, there are a number of “Instructional Strategies” and “Technology” courses that may benefit museum educators as well. Courses generally cost about $199 and you may receive graduate-level course credit from accredited universities for an additional fee.
Some of the courses to check out are:
*Connecting Family, Community, and Schools
*Developing Understanding with Dynamic Media and Digital Storytelling
*Differentiated Instruction
*Using Assessment and Evaluation
*Mastering the Skills of Online Teaching
*Publishing on the Web
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