As the modern age has brought lots of innovations including internet, it was expected that internet would affect the other disciplines including education for sure.

I am currently studying on my thesis and I am reading as many articles as possible in my field of expertise. I have come across Hampel & Stickler's (2005) skills pyramid recently. According to the pyramid, there are seven skills that are required for online teaching. (Click here to see the pyramid) 

The first required skill is to have basic computing skills. If you want to be successfull at online teaching, you shouldn't be a newbie. You don't have to be a tech geek either. The second is to have technical competence for the software/program that will be used for teaching. You don't need to know every single software out there but you should know the program that you will be teaching with. The third is to deal with possibilities of the medium. The teacher should be able to cope with integrating traditional activities into online teaching and be able to make necessary changes to benefit more from it.

Number four is the skill to create online socialization environment for the students who may not feel like a part of group online. That's also necessary to interact with students out of the class and know more about them. Canning (2004) says that a 'netiquette', do's and dont's of online behaviors, should be developed. Number five, facilitating communicative competence is one step forward of number four. The online community that is created should have a flowing movement and contribute the communicative competence of students. The sixth skill is to be creative and provide choices for the students. Compared to traditional classroom setting, there are many more resources which can help teachers be more creative and provide alternative settings for their students. The highest skill that an online teacher has is to have their own style. After having all the previous six skills, this one will come in a natural way as the teacher will be able to use the most useful materials for the students and express themselves in their personal ways.

Do you think many teachers can have all of these skills and use them actively?

References:

Hampel, R., & Stickler, U. (2005). New skills for new classrooms: Training tutors to teach languages online. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 18(4), 311–326.

Canning, J. (2004). "Disability and residence abroad." Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies Good Practice Guide. Retrieved 4 February 2011, from http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/2530