The focus of this site is to promote the use of any software tools available (proprietary or free) for practical, efficient and effective applications in teaching. Even when one is not teaching a Distance Education course, such tools can be useful (or not) for instruction. For me, always, the central question is this: are my course structure and needs controlling my teaching tools (and gimmicks), or are my teaching tools (and gimmicks) controlling my course structure and needs. I have found that, be it proprietary software or non-proprietary software, technology can be limiting, particularly if the instructor is limited by her knowledge of ways to manipulate that technology. Thus, it becomes an exploration of what one can do with what is available, even with technological support. It becomes, in other words, an issue of control.
A Cyberghost Professor is maintained by me, Carol L. Robinson (Ph.D., English). I teach college level English courses (composition, early British literature, medieval literature, film and literature, Deaf culture literature,...). I have been a 100% online Distance Educator for three years, but I have been working with technology (as supplement to classroom teaching) for much longer than that-- in fact, whether we recognize it or not, most of us have been teaching with some level or form of digitial technology since the '80s (some of us since long before that, since before I was even born).
