Mike Shumake teaches English to high school students, but he hasn’t set foot in a classroom in two years. He works from his first-floor office in his lovely Raleigh, NC home, where he was kind enough to chat with me a few weeks ago.
When I walked in, I was amazed by the array of technological wonders that filled the room. Three large, flat-panel monitors sat on the desk, connected to a behemoth desktop computer. Each of the monitors was tiled with a dozen open programs that seemed to be constantly refreshing, updating, and chirping. Above the monitors, a large, flat, white screen sat opposite a digital projector that can act as a fourth monitor when needed. Mike's smartphone was on the desk next to him as we talked, and it frequently buzzed with text messages and voicemails throughout the interview.
Mike didn’t grow up planning to be a teacher. When he was in the sixth grade, he decided he wanted to be an industrial psychologist. “I know that’s an odd thing to want to be in sixth grade,” he admits. “There’s not really any psychology involved, it’s about improving processes.” Mike wanted to help companies improve their processes and run more efficiently. But when he finally got to college and took his first industrial psychology class, he was in for an unpleasant surprise.
“By the time I actually took industrial psychology as a class, I was a sophomore in college. I had Dr. Ludwig, at ASU, and I had a blast. I didn’t do too well in the actual class, but I thought, this guy [Dr. Ludwig]'s having a blast, I want to do that. I want to be a teacher.” So Mike changed his major to English with a secondary education certification. “From 6th grade to sophomore year in college, I was all about industrial psych,” he said, “and then, boom, I went with education.”
Mike taught for ten years in face-to-face classrooms, most of which were spent at alternative schools for high-risk students in North Carolina. When he finished his Master’s in School Administration at NCSU, Mike started looking for other opportunities and became interested in virtual classrooms. He started working with the North Carolina Virtual Public School in 2008 while still teaching full time in a traditional classroom at the alternative school. He stopped teaching in a face-to-face environment in 2009. Since then, he’s come to see the connection between industrial psychology and his current field. To Mike, virtual schools are a model of efficiency – no expensive buildings to heat and cool, no wasted travel time for teachers or students, and more freedom for both teachers and students.
So what does a day in the life of a virtual teacher look like? When you hear the term, "virtual classroom," you probably think of a group of kids in a traditional classroom at one school watching a televised lecture being given by a teacher in another school several states away. But online teaching has evolved well beyond what we envisioned in the 1980s. Mike does sometimes give live webcasts, but most of his communications with students revolve around social media like Twitter and learning platforms like Blackboard to disseminate assignments and promote discussion so that his students can explore the material at their own pace.
He showed me his setup and explained how he uses various components to reach the students in a variety of ways. He uses TweetDeck to manage his contacts and get realtime updates from his students via Twitter and Facebook. He has connected his Twitter feed to his Blackboard course so that he can push messages from Twitter to Blackboard and simultaneously reach kids via text on their cell phones. Since most teenagers today live wired lives, getting a text on their phones lets them know that they need to check in with the class Blackboard site for a new assignment.
Mike also uses social media to encourage discussion and gauge student engagement. He often sends out questions about the reading and reads the replies carefully to find out how well the students understand the texts. “With automated processes, I can send a text message out to 70 students, and it doesn't look an automated, impersonal auto-message. So I send a personal message, and the kids think, ‘Oh, he's asking my opinion on this,’ and that's how I get the responses and create powerful student-teacher relationships.”
Students in online courses can be very self-directed, but there are deadlines, just like in traditional classrooms. "Kids are always going to give you excuses about why their work is late. The excuse doesn't matter. You just have to ask, "When are you going to get caught up?" Mike's philosophy is to let the students set their own timetables for turning in late work as a way of making them take ownership for the new deadline…They care, or they wouldn't give you an excuse. So you have to use the excuse as a way to motivate them to get caught up. "
Mike’s virtual teaching methods are so effective that over 95% of his students consistently pass his courses. Perhaps this is one reason he was named North Carolina Virtual Public School’s “Teacher of the Year” in 2009. In addition to teaching online classes, which takes up the bulk of his day, he also works as an advocate for the expansion of virtual learning in North Carolina and across the country. He currently serves on the Governor’s E-Learning Committee and frequently gives presentations at conferences like the North Carolina Technology in Education Society(NCTIES), North Carolina Distance Learning Association(NCDLA), and the iNACOL’s annual national conference, the Virtual School Symposium. Not having to report to a school building each day gives him the freedom to travel and participate in these kinds of development opportunities. He also maintains a blog about virtual education,www.quickedtech.com, and he was recently asked to write for a national education reform blog, edreformer.com, as well.
Mike believes that online education is the way of the future. “Online education is growing by fifty percent every year, nationally. NCVPS (North Carolina Virtual Public School) has become the second largest state-run online school in the country, and a lot of people in North Carolina don't even know about it.” But with budget concerns and classroom overcrowding nationwide, online education and virtual schools may become more common over the next few years.
So what steps would someone need to take to become an online teacher? If you’re already certified to teach in a traditional classroom setting, it can be as simple as contacting your state or local virtual public school program, taking a few training courses, and setting up a the necessary technology at home. Mike’s advice is to join iNACOL and network at the national VSS conference to put yourself on the fast track.
If you’re a student considering a career in education or someone in another field considering a career change, the first step is to get certified to teach, either by obtaining a bachelor’s degree in education (including student teaching in a face-to-face classroom) or through a lateral-entry program (if you already have a bachelor’s in another area). Mike is having conversations encouraging faculty at North Carolina State University to create an online education certification “fast-track” program using distance learning(of course!) which would allow people with jobs in various industries to get certified to teach and become an online teacher without having to take time away from their professions (and lose pay) to return to school full-time. However, this program may take several more years to develop and implement.
Still, according to Mike, there are advantages to the traditional path to teacher certification. “Young people who want to do this, you’ve got to go to school. Go ahead and get that education degree. Suck it up, do your student teaching, do the face to face teaching. You’ve got to learn both sides, you have to learn to be a professional, and the face-to-face school is going to teach you that. But then, when you’re ready, you take the leap of faith and leave the classroom.” So Mike advises young people interested in virtual teaching as a career to find out the requirements for online teaching certification in your state and work on those while you’re completing your first few years in a face-to-face school.
Learn more about Mike Shumake at his blog, www.quickedtech.com, or find out more about online teaching and learning at www.inacol.org.
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