Latest News

School L'ship Prospectus

Apply On-line

Summer School Prospectus

Apply On-line

OLTE Graduation photos

You are here: Home > Olte > Graduation > OLTE Graduation photos

OLTE Graduation

Total Photos: 7

The 13^th November 2008 saw a unique graduation event in Belfast Castle. Over 50 officers from the education support services (ELBs, ETI, CCEA) and practising post-primary teachers successfully completed RTU’s Online Learning and Teaching for Educators Programme (OLTE). The certificates were presented by Mr Gordon Topping, Chief Executive of the North Eastern Education and Library Board.

The Regional Training Unit (RTU) developed the OLTE programme in 2003 to meet the Department of Education’s (DE) requirement for a continuous professional development (CPD) programme that would help address the overarching goal of the Education Technology Strategy “That all young people should be learning, with, through and about the use of digital and online technologies”.

The OLTE programme, which focuses on the development of online tutors skills, is accredited at Level 4 by the Open College Network (Northern Ireland). The participants complete 3 progressively challenging units: Unit 1- Introduction to Online Tutor Skills, Unit 2 - Design, implement and tutor an online lesson and Unit 3 - Design, implement and tutor an online programme. To date over 200 graduates have provided more than 1400 participants with first-hand experience of learning in an online environment.

In 2007/08 the Department of Education funded the first post-primary teachers’ places on the OLTE programme. Teachers were able to avail of a CPD programme which requires them to reflect on their practice, develop resources, plan for delivery, teach and assess their pupils in an online environment. This valuable CPD opportunity allows teachers to revisit many of the GTC Professional Competences and can be used towards Performance Review and Staff Development (PRSD) requirements.

Last year’s teachers developed and delivered a variety of online courses to pupils from across a range of post-primary schools including, for example, aspects of GCSE History, GCE Science, and GCSE Modern Languages (A full list is available on the RTU website: http://www.rtuni.org). Following this success three post-OLTE projects are being developed for subsequent blended-course delivery: GCSE Double Award Engineering, Certificate of Personal Education (CoPE) and GCSE ICT.

This academic year (2008/2009) two cohorts of teachers have enrolled on OLTE and have successfully completed Unit 1. They will embark on Unit 2 in late January, followed by Unit 3 in the summer term with a target for online course delivery in September 2009.

The Department of Education is inviting a limited number of post-primary schools to apply for OLTE for the 2009/10 academic year. P riority will be given to applications from schools within Learning Communities which have had no access to OLTE training in previous cohorts, which clearly identify partner schools and have begun to consider which courses have online potential for their school/learning community and could form the basis for Unit 3 of OLTE. Further details may be found on the RTU website (http://www.rtuni.org).

Key Contacts

Eibhlin Tinneny (E-Learning Development Officer)	E: etinneny@rtuni.org	T: 02890 618121	Ext: 233
Geraldine Taggart (E-Learning Development Officer)	E: gtaggart@rtuni.org	T: 02890 618121	Ext: 230
Fiona Synnott (E-Learning Development Officer)	E: fsynnott@rtuni.org	T: 02890 618121	Ext: 266
Claire Robinson (Clerical Officer)	E: crobinson@rtuni.org	T: 02890 618121	Ext: 215

All Contacts