I’ve noticed some other patterns that also make it easier to get these future web workers up to speed.

1. It’s easier to teach tools than mindset. I’ve been helping out a friend who wants to move from working for an employer to freelancing. She’s picked up the tools that I’ve showed to her very quickly — but she’s still getting used to the idea that most of what she was doing in person can be accomplished online.
2. Always point out the tutorials and FAQs. I’m always happy to help out a friend, but we all have those friends that need three or four reminders on what may seem like an easy step to us. If you’re showing a friend one of the tools you use, make sure to point him or her to the documentation so that they can go back and look things up as needed.
3. Start small. It’s easy to get very used to working online with a wide variety of tools, if that’s what you do day in and day out. If you’re talking to someone relatively new to the game, just suggesting three new web sites can overwhelm them. Don’t try to list off every great piece of software in one go.
4. Explain that everyone can learn this. I’ve heard more than one person over the age of 25 tell me that they’re far too old to learn new tools, usually after just a few minutes of talking about technology. The fact of the matter is that there is no age limit on learning new technology. It’s important to be sensitive to such worries, but it’s also important to explain that learning is doable.
5. Be prepared for follow up questions. Even if a new web worker has all the documentation in the world, there are some questions that he or she’ll want to ask someone with experience. While it seems that most future web workers start out with technical questions, as things proceed, you may get questions like how to sell the boss on the idea of telecommuting.

Do you mentor novice web workers? Share your tips below.

Image by Flickr user aranarth

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• In the 2006–07 academic year, 66 percent of the 4,160 accredited US colleges offered college-level distance education courses. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)
• In fall 2007, 22 percent of U.S. college students took at least one web-based class. (Source: Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States, 2008 from the Sloan Consortium)

Would you believe I have a B.A. in education? Though not a teacher by profession, I’m passionate about education. Perhaps, that’s why I’m a writer — to educate people. Being deaf, I knew I never wanted to teach in a classroom, but I’ve worked with online classes at a major university’s M.S. program. Distance education opens doors for many of us. You can develop expertise in any subject you want.

Online education might make teaching a possible career for those who wouldn’t consider working in a classroom. Is teaching the career for you, or perhaps something you can do on the side?

Types of Teaching Careers

Online programs don’t stop at postsecondary education. School districts offer online classes so students can make up failed classes, get ahead or take extra classes. Professional organizations, specialized schools and programs, community colleges and experts offer non-credit courses for people looking to learn new skills in their professions or hobbies.

I took a handful of online classes through my city’s community college affiliation with Education To Go. The price was right and it helped me conquer QuickBooks and do more with Photoshop.

As an example of the diversity of online learning options and opportunities for teaching posts available, here are some options for writing courses.

• Degree programs: Thomas Edison State College offers a B.A. in Journalism, all done online. Texas Tech has an M.A in Technical Communication.
• College-affiliated resources: Education To Go includes writing courses in its catalog.
• Experts: Professionals with teaching experience, like Christina Katz, conduct email classes. While you can go off and create your own courses to teach like Katz does, you still need to do marketing and earn credibility to encourage people to sign up with you when you’re not affiliated with a college or known organization.
• Online publications and resources: AbsoluteWrite, a popular resource for writers, gives instructors a space to teach their classes. While AbsoluteWrite and its staff don’t teach the classes, it allows credible professionals to affiliate themselves with the respected AbsoluteWrite name.
• High schools: My local independent school district offers English classes in its eSchool.

How to Qualify

For college programs, you typically need at least a Master’s degree and others require a PhD. Danielle McIntosh, White River Online teacher, teaches at a local district’s public online high school that serves students all over Washington State. Before working there, she had 10 years of teaching special education. “Boise State University offers a certificate program for online teaching. However, almost everything has been on-the-job training in my situation,” McIntosh says.

Author Christina Katz believes that credibility is the first qualification to becoming a teacher. “Credibility can come from degrees, experience, word-of-mouth and having been published on your topic of expertise. When it comes to credibility, I don’t think it comes from any one thing but the accumulation of many things — especially what others say about you,” she says.

Teaching Tools

Each online program has a preference as to what application or system it uses as the base for its courses. Some use a third party solution while others create their own system.

Tools of the trade include email, headsets for online lectures/webinars, Microsoft Word and Excel for reviewing student work and tracking grades. Depending on the course type you teach, you may need specific tools or applications. One course I worked with used a web-based simulator where students entered decisions and could see the results of their actions. Danielle McIntosh uses Moodle as well as APEX and PLATOWeb for content.

Find Opportunities

Margaret Garcia recommends looking for posts through the web sites of online colleges or programs. She points out that some schools have stringent hiring requirements while others don’t. “Most people break into online teaching through University of Phoenix — they have an easier hiring process and though they don’t pay well, they are willing to give a break to a possible good teacher. Cappella University, on the other hand, is one of the hardest,” Garcia says. She works with as many as five different online universities including National University and Kaplan University.

In “Get Known before the Book Deal,” Christina Katz recommends starting locally in the classroom with live students to gain experience before teaching online. She suggests looking into organizations, conferences, local meetings and events and adult education centers. While this takes away the web working aspect, it’s just for a short time with places near you. Not only research the sites of those offering online classes, but also remember to network and seek out other teachers who might have insight to offer and decision-makers behind the programs.

Would you consider a career in education?

Photo credit: LittleMan

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Definitely an attractive proposition, and one which I can think of many uses for in terms of web working applications. But in practice, what are WiZiQ’s limitations? Could I, for instance, monetize the service, and offer lessons created with WiZiQ as part of a subscription or pay-per-lesson model?

First of all, it’s clear that WiZiQ is designed with live interaction in mind. It features an extensive scheduling system, and allows you to comb your network of contacts to invite participants to join your sessions. Of course, to participate, potential students/instructors must first sign up for a WiZiQ account. Once set up, users can upload all kinds of documents, including PowerPoint presentations, to supplement their teaching.

Sessions feature a whiteboard which can be used by all participants. The whiteboard is for live writing and drawing, and live audio and/or video feeds can be used for communication between teachers and participants. Classroom control can be shifted to anyone participating, at the discretion of the instructor/moderator.

When I signed up, I was asked about my purposes in using the service, and about what subjects I was interested in teaching (since I indicated that I wanted to use it for teaching). The categories available led me to believe that at least one of the purposes of WiZiQ was to supplement actual, accredited education, meaning that profs or high school teachers could opt to use a free WiZiQ classroom to enhance or replace a physical one.

Since that seems to be the case, it seems that you can use the service as a platform for subscription or paid lessons, but there’s no way to automate this process using WiZiQ, meaning that you’ll have to set up those details on your own elsewhere between you and your clients.

WiZiQ is useful even if you’re not looking to sell your services. There’s a wide variety of free, public lessons available, and if you’re goal is to become a subject matter expert in your particular field, there are worse ways to go about it. My only concern is that you don’t reach a huge audience through WiZiQ, since the main benefit is live interaction, which obviously how many people you can reach. Still, you can archive and make available for review all of your recorded lessons.

The site is also a handy networking and scouting tool. Through it, you can meet other professionals working in the same field as yourself. That’s good for professional development, or, if you happen to be a headhunter or employer, you can use WiZiQ to find potential employees or contractors.

Some people might be overwhelmed by WiZiQ, since, despite the relatively simple tools it uses, it asks for a lot of information and actually more closely resembles a full-fledged social network than a collaborative web app. Still, it could be a nice, free addition to your web working arsenal.

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