A companion to the last post…
What are some ways teachers’ roles are changing through technology integration?
As many of you have, I have tried to provide a correlation between my answers in this response, and my answers to the previous question.
Teachers will…
Wow. Teachers will have to do everything I posted in my response to the student prompt, even the fifth one, which will become more important as there are increasingly more specializations and each of us can know correspondingly less of what there is to know in our fields.
So, teachers will…
1.) … become active creators, as well as consumers, of educational content.
2.) … interact (and solve problems) with global networks of peers with similar (or related) interests. These peers will be a variety of ages and have a variety of ability, experience, and skill levels.
3.) … interact (and solve problems) with experts in a variety of real-world fields and applications.
4.) … become reflective meta-cognitive thinkers (and problem solvers).
5.) … show us a thing or two, but need to learn to be graceful about it at the same time. In general, they will need to come to terms with the awesome and unprecedented responsibility they will be burdened with along with these amazing new powers.
At the risk of being repetitive, I have taken a systematic approach to this…
Teachers will also need to support these things in students (this is the hard part – and what we need to be focusing on), so they will also need to …
6.) … help students acquire the skills, experience, and relationships necessary to become active creators, as well of educational content.
7.) … facilitate student interaction (and problem solving) with global networks of peers with similar (or related) interests. These peers will be a variety of ages and have a variety of ability, experience, and skill levels.
8.) … facilitate student interaction (and problem solving) with experts in a variety of real-world fields and applications.
9.) … help students acquire the skills, experience, and relationships necessary to become reflective meta-cognitive thinkers (and problem solvers).
10.) … help students acquire the skills, experience, and relationships necessary in order to come to terms with the awesome and unprecedented responsibility they will be burdened with along with these amazing new powers.
Note that I have placed the teachers own development ahead of their facilitation of students’ development. I think the more common reversal of these changes is so grave an error that it may account for the failure of many school reform initiatives. Quite simply, many educational technologists are asking teachers to help students become something that the teachers have not already become themselves, and which they may not even yet comprehend.
Well, that lays my arrogance out on the table now doesn’t it. ;)
BTW, when I say that we need to focus on the "hard part" (ie 6 through 10 above), it is as much because we as educational technologists must do these things for teachers as it is because teachers must do them for students.
-Mark
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