Tapped In Member Perspectives:Meet Maria Avgerinou

Maria Avgerinou (MariaAV) is a Visiting Assistant Professor in Instructional Technology, at the Department of Educational Technology, Research and Assessment, College of Education, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.

Maria's Perspective

Although I was only recently introduced to TAPPED IN, I have already used it extensively with my students, internationally-based colleagues and their classes, and with the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) delegates last November.

As my teaching for this academic year concentrates on distance and online education, for many of the synchronous communication sessions (small groups) I organize for my graduate classes, I prefer to use TAPPED IN as it is an extremely user-friendly, versatile, and reliable platform. Students of various Information/Technological Literacy levels, including those that do not possess the latest technology at home, have repeatedly reported how comfortable they are communicating through TAPPED IN.

I often invite colleagues working in the same subject area, to join my classes as guest tutors. Sometimes we also extend the team-teaching experience to include their classes as well. Again, TAPPED IN has proved to support our online activity admirably!

Finally, when we organized the Annual Conference of International Visual Literacy Association, at Malardalen University Sweden last November, TAPPED IN was used to support the virtual presentations of delegates that were unable to travel outside the US as a result of the recent American tragedy.