Looking to boost your tech skills but hate paying money for things? Then you’re probably going to want to sit down for this. Modern Lessons is a free online learning platform I’m starting up in an effort to bring educators, parents, and school administrators around the world into the modern era of technology.
From learning the basics of Facebook to an advanced course on deploying iPads in the classroom, there’s a whole range of courses for every skill level. There’s a ton of stuff dedicated to beginners though at the start. I’m working on more advanced and intermediate courses though.
So what are Modern Lessons? Here’s a bit from the site about why it got started and what to expect:
[Modern Lessons] is our solution to one of the biggest problems facing education: lack of technical know-how. The people running schools and teaching our children know less about technology and social media than most students. That makes for a difficult classroom for both student and teacher.
With Modern Lessons, teachers (and anyone else involved in education) has the chance to level the playing field. Think of Modern Lessons like it’s a cheat sheet that lets you quickly build your skillset in hours instead of months.
Let’s say you want to learn the basics of how to use an iPad, spiff up your resume, or launch a BYOD program in your school? You won’t find these courses available on any other site and you certainly wouldn’t find them for free. So Modern Lessons wants to fix that.
We think of our model as a ‘Khan Academy for educators’ and plan on helping as many people as possible. We’re not in this to make a billion dollars. We have much grander goals: to improve education from the inside out.
So here’s the deal: Modern Lessons is a free tool for teachers, students, parents, school administrators, and everyone else looking to boost their skills. We’re currently specializing in offering mini-courses designed to help those relatively new to technology. We’re also building some premium and accredited courses that will go a bit more in-depth.
We figured it’d be helpful to make this online learning platform as simple as possible, as useful as possible, and as cost-effective as possible. That’s why there aren’t a ton of features (that’s a feature in itself!) and basically, all courses are free.
We hope you enjoy this resource and help yourself to our skill-building courses to improve your life!
So, get excited. The platform is just in its infancy and has already seen more than 5,000 teachers sign up and take courses. In fact, most of those teachers are taking more than one course. Don’t be surprised if you find a new skill that you’d like to learn.
There’s even a ‘request a course’ feature where you can ask, well, me to make a course for you. Doesn’t get much more personal than that!
Also be on the lookout for the accredited course in the near future. Those are going to be paid and very high quality. Just FYI.
