Online technologies help organizations provide a convenient format for educators to participate in collaborative discussions, mentoring relationships, and community building. In addition, they are cost-effective tools to bridge time and distance. They are used not only to create online professional development (OPD) courses, but also to enhance face-to-face teacher education.

Go to the Introduction to Online Technologies to learn about specific benefits of online technologies, the various tools and strategies that are available, and the successful practices of other organizations.

Our current feature, the Online Professional Development Quick Tour, shows how different online media work together to deliver a rich learning experience.

Resources has links to other, complementary pages and sites to help you decide which online technologies are best for your teachers and your organization.

EDC's Center for Online Professional Education (COPE) has collaborated in dozens of projects to enhance teacher development, and it is continuing research to find the most effective strategy for online education. See the Who We Are page for a listing of some of our projects.

Contact us if you would like to receive assistance from EDC to help you plan your approach, evaluate the technology options, and develop capacity within your project to design and manage online professional development.

| ©2004 Education Development Center, Inc. All rights reserved.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Grant No. EHR-0335360. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this matieral are those of the authors and do not not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.