Introducing: The Future Teacher network

By AmplifyFE

The Future Teacher network organises monthly webinars aimed at supporting the sharing of great ideas for accessible digital teaching across the tertiary sector. These webinars regularly attract over 100 attendees. They are recorded and captioned with all resources made available through our Xerte platform; covering topics such as using rich media, learning analytics and open educational resources. 

The original Future Teacher project was an international European project funded for two years and that funding ended in 2019. However, the UK team, all experienced educators, valued the enthusiasm of the community that evolved so much that from 2019 to present it has been run on a voluntary basis and the team of volunteers has doubled in size, making us more sustainable. 

What is unique about the community?

From the beginning, we aimed to do things differently. We’ve tried to build the project on an important and valued set of principles:

Pragmatism – prioritising practices that demonstrably work and can be replicated without big budgets or specialist skills.
Cross sector – aiming to be as relevant to both Further and Higher Education.
Openness – entirely open educational resources.  We have used Xerte toolkits (open source) to create the resources. You can even import our resources into your own Xerte installations and adapt them as needed.
Accessibility – digital accessibility is a core value. We’re on the same journey as anyone else and often limited by similar constraints but we’re always mindful of maximising accessibility within our constraints.
Community – a mailing list of over 800 members, a core of regulars and all sessions recorded (with nearly 7,500 YouTube views in total).
Humanity – for the last 5 years, Future Teacher has run as a passion project by a (growing) group of volunteers. We share the desire to humanise technology. Ethics are high on the agenda – whether accessibility, inclusion, copyright or AI – and we love to showcase unknown innovators and get the student perspective direct from student contributors..
Nurture – some of our early attendees grew into early presenters and are now respected experts in their own right. 

Our monthly webinars deal with topics relevant to accessible, inclusive teaching with digital tools. All are recorded and made available with subtitles on our You Tube account and embedded within our Xerte open access resource. Take a look and click to open the topics list – you will uncover many resources which can save you time and support your teaching. 

1. Online learning – what works?

2. The Flipped Classroom

3. Knowing what they know

4. Collaborative teaching and learning

5. Strategies to support reading

6. Strategies to support writing

7. Self assessment and mastery learning

8. Social media for teaching and learning

9. Inclusive Practice

10. Rich Media 1 – Images

11. Rich Media 2 – Audio

12. Rich Media 3 – Video

13. Getting savvy with digital tools

14. Designing appropriate assessments

15. Designing for technology enhanced programmes

16. Designing and creating online learning activities and resources

17. WWW – the wonderful world of webinars

18. OER and Open Source

19. Learning Analytics (for mere mortals.

What next? Get involved!

Everyone is welcome to join the FutureTeacher community.

We are always on the look-out for potential speakers. If any of the following apply please get in touch via the Jiscmail mailing list or fill in your offer on our call for speakers form. 

• You are a practitioner and you’ve focused on one or more of the above themes in your practice and have some reflections to share. This could be a good opportunity to gather evidence for professional portfolios.
• You support and develop teaching colleagues and one or more of them is doing excellent work in one of the above themes and deserves wider recognition. 
• You support a community of practice and you are looking for opportunities to take good practices to a wider audience.
• Your institution does great work but it’s not widely known and you’re looking for a chance to remedy that.

Additionally, our presenters are awarded a Future Teacher open badge in recognition of their contribution to the community which can be shared on your website or social media – wherever you have a professional online presence. Why not add to your portfolio of evidence of professional activity? 

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