Tom March

from classroom teacher to web-based educational designer

Here’s this thing called the web. Connect it to classrooms. Can you make the most of it? This was the challenge that led me from the life of a classroom teacher to that of an online educator. And it turns out that most of education is now confronted with the same challenge: what do we do with the Web? Yet many teachers face other challenges many times daily. I taught for 10 years so I’m pretty familiar with what it’s like to try your hardest at the most important job in the world and then add the dimension of fiddling with computers on top of it all. Since 1995, I’ve been out of the traditional classroom, learning to work the web for education. Read the ozline story to see what we do or check the résumé below (or download a version in pdf).

Background

I began this career in education loving life as a high school English Teacher.  After about ten years of this, I received a three-year fellowship during which two colleagues and I developed eLearning activities and sites for educators and students.  Being the mid-90s and the early days of the Web, we were able to make a mark and I was off-and-running as an online educator and consultant.  This made our family’s move to Australia in 1998 a smoother transition as I continued to develop online activities, create Web sites, write articles and lead hands-on workshops.  Since then I’ve been working continuously to make learning in schools as real, rich and relevant as possible (the New 3Rs).  It seems every year of two, I add something else to solve a part of the problem.  What problem?  The fact that when we scaled up education to suit the large numbers of students in the 19th and 20th centuries, we made the best of what we had and created “Assembly Line Schools.” Limited staff and resources meant that a “one-size-fits-all” approach with year groups and content areas was the best option.  Most of my work attempts to use technology to dissolve this artificial constraint and to make learning more human and meaningful – which research overwhelmingly finds leads to better results.

SUMMARY OF QUALIFICATIONS

• • Co-developer of the WebQuest strategy
  • Conference keynote presenter on integrating technology & learning
  • Published author in professional journals
  • Curriculum designer of Web-based learning activities
  • Innovative creator of new models for education
  • Designer and developer of interactive software
  • Successful facilitator of professional learning for teachers
  • Expansive knowledge of research on learning theories
  • Proved ability to complete projects of the highest quality
  • Long history of designing innovative e-learning solutions
  • Recognised at county level as Teacher of the Year (San Diego, USA)

Please Contact Tom for a complete résumé