A teacher is like surveillance camera today.
As the technology is developing in an amazing speed nowadays, the students are able to gain knowledge from various aspects, such as through the Internet, TV programs, etc. However, in this info-exploded society, students may not know what is right and correct, and will probably take whatever they have seen. The teacher then plays a crucial role to keep a watchful eye on his/her students. George Siemens states in his article: New information is continually being acquired. The ability to draw distinctions between important and unimportant information is vital. It is the educators’ responsibility to oversee the behavior of the students, and to teach them what is true and false on the Internet. Besides, the students should be taught how to tell what is important and unimportant information among overwhelmed data.
Moreover, Siemens, G. stresses, “Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organization or a database), is focused on connecting specialized information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current state of knowing.” It truly easy and convenient to gain knowledge now. With just one click, we can acquire whatever we want to learn and know. Thus, some people may be fooled around with the fake information, which is posted on the Internet. For me, the tool should be just the assistant instead of the commander. It is us who use the tool, instead of being used by the tool. How to use the tool properly to make it a helpful material for us is insignificant.
The rise of community websites, for example, Facebook, Twitter, My Space, and so on, has led a dramatically change on the way people communicate. He also explains in the video, “The software is a tool allows individual to form communication with each other,” and “Our learning today is one of the forming network with each other.” Since the communication involves in more technology now than before, we should pay attention to this specific communicate way. It can interfere in a either good or bad way. That is why the teacher has to supervise his/her students all the time to make sure they are not distracted from the regular route.
2 comments:
I'm not sure that I agree with your view of the teacher as a surveillance camera although I think I can see what you have in mind. The reason I disagree is that although teacher may at times have to supervise the students' use of the Internet, it is more important for the teacher to teach them how to tell what is important and unimportant information (as you mention) because students will spend more time in cyberspace without supervision than with supervision. The teacher should also teach students how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources of information.
Yes, I totally agree with your opinion about that the teacher should teach students to distinguish the sources. That is one of the most important things not only the students but also the Internet user should learn and be aware of!
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