Read the blog below for a very interesting idea about information and what value a teacher adds to the process of acquiring it. I think some of the implications of the post are somewhat naive. But although I have some reservations about the post, particularly with regard to the “quality-of-information” question which gets somewhat glossed over, it seems to me, the post below is one worth reading. If you have a chance, read the blog (link below) and then come back… http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com/2011/11/black-friday-thoughts.html
——————————————
Apart from my immediate “it’s not quite that easy” response, I had a second one as I thought over why I think it’s “not quite that easy.” Thinking about the ways the post was wrong (in my estimation) led me to think about some of the things it may have gotten right.
And that led me to think about what teaching and learning, outside a school, really involve. And that musing in turn led me to the following thought: what if we looked at the definition of teaching as simply making sure your students learn and considered everything else to be details/implementations? To be sure, not all students will learn what we think they should, regardless of what we do. But then they don’t now, either, which may be why non-AP teachers (who are used to getting “judged” even if not formally evaluated on how their students do) don’t like the idea of being judged on student outcomes instead of teacher inputs. Given the choice, really, who would, right? Because we control the latter and only influence the former.
I would like to suggest, though, that in many areas, the “information” and often even the “skills” students need are available, at least in abstract form, on the net. It is, obviously, a different kettle of fish to read how to make a lay-up or synthesize a chemical compound compared to actually *accomplishing* that action.
But apart from such “translation” skills, it seems to me that a great deal of the “added value” of a good teacher is helping students figure out what they need to do and then helping them learn how to find the information they need to accomplish the goal–and definitely to help them learn how to evaluate the sources to which they turn for information. Then we provide feedback on how well they’ve done it (few websites do this aspect at all yet, much less well) and make specific suggestions for improvement.
Even if you think there might be merit to my idea, let me assure you of one impediment to change: our students are so trained to be teacher-responsive that my personal experience, when I’ve tried to do this sort of thing before, is that students mostly don’t want it: they want me to tell them “how to do it.” As few of the really worthwhile or challenging problems in life are well-defined with an accompanying algorithm for solving them, however, I’m not sure of the long-term utility of such an approach….
In the short term–pass the next test–it works well, of course, which must be (apart from the fact that that’s how most of us were taught) why we use it lol.