Backyard

A couple of things have happened to me in the last week or so which have made me more aware than ever of change and how it creeps past us. (I’m just recording this mainly for myself)

• Knowledge/Information is no longer “something..somewhere”. Knowledge is around us but changing (or at least increasing) so quickly that the role of a teacher is to
  •  
    • be able to direct people towards what they need to know
    • be able to help people evaluate and  compare
    • be able to help people connect and collaborate with others for whom the same knowledge is relevant at that time
    • be a peer learner - my growth may be in different areas but the process is similar
    • realise that others have probably done what I am trying to do and that while re-inventing the wheel will certainly teach me a lot often my role is to be aware that someone has already invented a (similar) wheel
• Some of the experiences which helped make me feel I needed to think:
• David spending an hour writing our instructions for other teachers, failing to realise that the associated wiki had many excellent lessons including video!
• I realised that when I did Physics at Uni I went into a “place” where others held the “secrets” I absorbed these, held  them dearly to myself and spent much of my life handing on these “secrets” to others. Even when new knowledge (e.g. astronomy) my role was to read the books, absorb the knowledge and pass it on so that it could be understood. I realised that I don’t do that any more. When something new comes along (e.g. podcasts) lots of people know something about it. Others hear about it. I like understanding new things so I “sniff out” others who say interesting things and learn from them while thinking how this new stuff applies in my world. I share my knowledge with whoever is interested because it is relevant to the world we all live in.
• I listened to some great teachers sharing projects they had worked on during the year and was struck by how much work could be done by someone trying to create “content”. This “stuff” is obviously important but at this time in our growth I feel teachers should more “connect” as I said above. We need more freedom from external imposed curricula which often seem to demand specific “content”

More later I hope …