patricia’s posterous

          After embarking on our Web 2.0 Safari and watching the YouTube videos, it struck me how these new tools and the horizons they open are reshaping  and redefining our roles as teachers.  Before, teachers were recipients and transmitters of knowledge.  We then became facilitators of learning. Now we seem to be morphing into instigators and mediators of learning.  The learning process has been shifting from being the responsibility of the teachers to being that of the learners themselves, and this is apparent in what we see going on in the world of Web 2.0.  It has long been held that the best way to truly learn something is to try to teach it to someone else, and this is what is going on now on the digitalized world. Knowledge is shared and shaped by everyone in a community, benefiting all. Our role as teachers now seems to be to make sure that our students have the access to this world where they will shape their learning to fit their interests and needs.

          This by no means implies that we have lost our place in the learning process.  As I see it, our responsibility has increased, for as we instruct our students in the various programs available to them and make them responsible for their learning, we need to be selective and teach our students to be.  We need to be critical as to what is presented to us and teach our students to be.  We need to be open to new ideas, ways, solutions and teach our students to be. This seems to be a much more challenging endeavor than to share knowledge acquired.  The skills we need to prioritize are of a higher complexity level then reading, writing, speaking, listening. More than ever we are not merely instructors, but yes, educators.

         What we present to our students will instigate their curiosity and their learning, but we still need to be around to mediate the process, giving  a hand when it is necessary, correcting, redirecting, stimulating, questioning, and clarifying.  There is no guarantee that what is learned is what needs to be learned, so our presence as mediators will always be fundamental.  

          The possibilities are mindboggling.