Tag Archives: teaching

posted on January 25, 2013

Teachers should seek new knowledge and as often as possible. This commitment can extend from a few hours learning to cook crepes, to a life-long study of birds. This will inform our practice enabling us to rethink how we process new learning: choosing a topic, buying a book or searching the internet, learning from an expert, joining a club, writing down findings, and retaining and applying knowledge (in whole or in part). This understanding spotlights our expectations of student process, and production.

The internet, and changes in the complexity of problems and questions, have expanded the role of teacher as imparter of self-stored knowledge to include facilitator and mentor of self-guided student learning. Where we once had rote learning, we now include problem solving. New directions in education lead to students actually finding problems and defining probing questions themselves, and then solving them. Improving how we look for, validate, compact, sort and evaluate information will be crucial to our success as learners, students, and teachers.