There are many, many tricks of the educational trade, but here are a few for my contribution.

Socratic seminars
Socratic seminars are a regular part of my teaching, and a regular part of this course. The underlying philosophy of Socratic seminars is not to provide answers, but to rather to enable learners to think (and question) for themselves. Students often walk away with more questions than answers, but in this case, it’s a good problem to have.

Engagement
Although conversation is good, to be a successful teacher one must engage his or her students. An engaged student, whether face-to-face or hundreds of miles away, is a student that takes active responsibility for his or her learning.

Pedagogy
Greek for “lead the child”. This doesn’t always refer to the instructor, but I believe it can be self-driven. Desire and direction should definitely be a part of the dynamics of learning.

And now for some of the technological gadetry.

Blogging
Blogging is a great way to perpetuate dialogue between other teachers, students, and even their parents. I think consistency plays a part in blogging - to be an effective blogger one must write thoughtfully and often, and respond to others in their personal community.

Podcasting
Um, everybody is doing it. These digital media files are distributed over the Internet using RSS feeds, and are syndicated. If there is only one media file on a website, it’s a webcast. If you can subscribe to a succession of them, they are podcasts.

Wikis
Wikis can be used in education to create simple, informational websites for both teachers and students. Typically speaking, wikis have a group of contributing authors that add to the site, and they can also edit one another’s content.

This list is by no means exhaustive, consider it to be a few Allen wrenches and maybe a Phillips screwdriver out of the complete set. Everyone ends up back at Lowe’s for more tools eventually.