It may be that nothing has changed in the way you teach, but schools, teachers, and methodologies designed and operated on past assumptions will not survive. Doing the same things that seem correct because they are familiar and you have mastered them, will put you out on the street. Teachers doing what worked in the past will change or be by-passed. In the public schools that are evolving and necessary for the Information Age and the Interactive Age; America’s future, only educators who understand the requirements of our times will survive.
We can no longer accept teachers who “teach” using the old model of top-down, coercive instruction. The old, “Sit there. Listen to me! Keep your book open and your mouth shut,” model worked for training factory workers and teaching workers to obey authority. Now, educators must evolve teaching into interactive, multimodal experiences utilizing virtual space resources where learning requires the student’s full attention as they fight pirates, explore the Philippines, solve math problems that that let them enter a world of applications, walk on the surface of each planet in our solar system, follows the magic and mystery of an educational game designed to teach the basics of physics, urban design, power grids and city planning, move through the human body to understand how it works, and walk inside a leaf as a botanist.
In none of these intensive learning experiences is the teacher the sole source of information, or the policeman in charge of student adaptation to school. The role of the teacher must change and it will never be the same again. If you fail to understand what is happening and necessary, you will be of no value to students.
Excerpts taken from: Vital Lies: The Irrelevance Of Our Schools In The Information Age. Written as a format for national discussion.
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