Interesting how teaching approaches have gone from "Sage on the Stage" to "Guide on the Side" and now "Connectors." This from a paper by Will Richardson, one of my favorite bloggers, in Edutopia, World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others. Subtitled "How to teach when learning is everywhere."
To quote a snippet: "Inherent in the collaborative process is a new way of thinking about teaching and learning. We must find our own teachers, and they must find us. In fact, in my own kids' lives, I believe their best, most memorable, and most effective teachers will be the ones they discover, not the ones they are given. That's no slight against the people in their face-to-face classrooms, who are equally important in a connected world. But it does suggest that we as educators need to reconsider our roles in students' lives, to think of ourselves as connectors first and content experts second."
Lots more good stuff in the article. Of course, a good teacher is probably a combination of all three: sage, guide and now connector. Will's article also led me to Classroom 2.0, which I joined. This is a social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education. It's a great example of what you can do with Ning.
Visit Classroom 2.0
Yes, one more social network to belong to!
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2 comments:
Thanks for those pointers, Frank.
Your post makes me wonder about teachers using web 2.0 tools to model their own learning. Where does this work best?
Hi Bryan, sorry for the delay in responding!
I don't have an answer right now, but you have a compelling question.
As an aside, the last faculty meeting on teaching/learning I attended indirectly included the "Connectors" issue. Some of the faculty were concerned that with all the information out there, how can instructor determine what's best to use? It appears that even content experts can be overwhelmed by the billions of pages on the web.
We decided to get the librarians involved in offering some workshops, after the school year is over, in information literacy for faculty. We have covered the student needs, but it appears faculty want to sharpen these skills also.
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