Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Online Courses

Sorry about the lack of timely posting lately, for anyone who actually regularly reads my blog.  Things have been crazy, and I have several posts in the works to cover the time I've missed (back-dated to the day when the things took place), but I wanted to share some information that I've received today while I was doing some researching.
Perhaps I should explain how this researching came about.  This morning, as I was studying my scriptures (in this case I was actually reading the Ensign, an article about a day of service), I received the inspiration that one of the ways that I can serve people, other than by doing my job, of course, would be to teach English while I'm abroad.  I also thought that perhaps it would be better to get some training in that regard.  So I started researching online certification programs.  It's not something that I need to be able to work, because I wasn't thinking of having a second career or anything like that, but as a service to the community.  In that way, the certification program that I use is probably less critical then if I were actually looking to work in the field and get a job/be paid.  At the same time, I don't want to pay hundreds (some of the courses I was looking at are over $1000!!!) of dollars just for a certificate.  If I'm going to pay for this training, I want it to be useful.
Thus the research.  I discovered that the Department of Education has a list of accredited institutions and recognized accrediting agencies.  I also found an interesting article that talks about accreditation, and what language is used by companies/organizations to make it SEEM that they are accredited.  Unfortunately, I don't think this really helps me much in my search for the perfect online TESOL certification program, because as far as I can tell, there are NO online TESOL certification programs accredited by a Department of Education recognized accrediting agency, but for anyone who is looking into an online degree, I thought it just might be handy...

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