Quarantine time part 2 - Online Courses

You have time? Most of you at least! Now it's the time to do something for yourself.
Future Learn is a website that offers all different kinds of courses in various fields. The best part is that they are free of charge! If you want a certificate, you pay a small fee, but if you just want to get the knowledge it's absolutely free. I have been using it for so many years now with both paid and free courses and I always find something new to learn.
That's what I've learned this past month:

• Teaching English Online - Cambridge Assessment English: I have been teaching online for quite a few years now, but there's always room for learning. New apps and programs are being developed every day so why not? This course covers a lot of ground on online teaching with videos, sites, ideas and suggestions. It points out the advantages and disadvantages of working freelance or for an online teaching school / company, shows a variety of platforms, tools and resourses, talks about skills and motivation techniques as well as suggestions on how to help students on reading, listening, speaking, vocabulary, grammar and error correction. Finally it suggests ways on how to communicate  and start out a new teaching business. Quite useful I would say!!
• IELTS Reading & Writing - British council: I have been teaching IELTS for years now, but I always try to find out new strategies and material. With videos, charts and examples, these courses give lots of ideas and help to both teachers and students. 
• Introduction to Research Ethics: Working with people - University of Leeds: This course is about the importance of ethics, the ethical considerations when recruiting people to research. It mentions vulnerable participants, and if research could actually harm. How can we protech personal data? And what are the ethical issues we should be careful of?
• Introduction to Intercultural studies: Intercultural contact - University of Leeds: Although this course is adressed to people who aim to study abroad, there are still a lot of things that are interesting, especially to people who work or study with people from other ethnicities. It's about intercultural contact competence, this means the ability to interact effectively across cultures. There is also an explaination about ethnicity studies, which was amazingly intersting.
• Communication and interpersonal skills at work - University of Leeds: What is your personal style in communication? What communication platforms should you use? What is your approach? How can you achieve better communication? How can you manage challenging conversations? How can you demonstrate your communication skills? I have learned a lot!
• Collaborative working in a remote team - University of Leeds: A much needed course especially nowadays. What are the challenges, oportunities and wellness of remote working? How can you develop your remote working plan? How can you manage time, projects and workload? Lots of useful suggestions.
• Presenting your work with impact - University of Leeds: This is all about presentations. There is always room to learn more, even if you have presented in front of an audience hundreds of times! This course informs you about storytelling, how to create content to communicate, how to create a slide deck for your presnetation, how to manage yourself being mindful. It shows some presentetion delivery techniques and also suggest ways to develop your presnetation skills. I found it really useful with lots of great suggestions.

Future Learn is a wonderful teaching page with lots of fileds of interest.

It is not the only website that offers courses though. There is a variety of pages free or with a small fee which can help you develop. They give you skills and interests you may not even new you had. 

Quarantine blog to be continued...