With the invention of the Internet, will we do away with teachers? I think we will actually have more teachers than ever, just not the traditional ones. Education has already undergone a massive transformation and it will continue to evolve. You don’t have to copy everything a teacher writes out on a blackboard anymore. Heck, you don’t even have to be in the same room as the teacher to get taught! What do you call it when someone writes an article on a blog or creates an instructional video online? What is another name for two people who share information? It’s a “teaching moment.” If they share it with each other then it is a “peer-to-peer” teaching moment and requires no pre-defined teacher role.
Parsing the Thoughts
Search engines do nothing more than parse sentences and match verbal patterns. Texting is a form of parsing in that you take out the non-essential vowels, in many cases, and end up with sentences full of abbreviations that mean the same thing. Information is becoming denser and more cryptic, yet it is conveying much, much, more meaning. Some might call that a decline in learning, but it actually is creating more opportunities for people to pick only the information they need exactly when they need it: A teaching moment. Every major company makes use of teaching moments when they encapsulate an idea in a logo and create a brand. They wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t effective! Now, everyone else can get in on that game, too.
Finding Your Keys
Do you ever have that instance when you’re ready to head out the door, but can’t find your car keys? What happens then? You stall out. You spend time looking everywhere for the misplaced keys. It keeps you from moving and delays you from reaching your intended goal. Forgetting a password is a similar experience. What if you could get that key or password to pop up every single time you realized you were missing them temporarily? That is where we are headed towards with information. Put on a pair of Google Glass and now you can Google him or her even as you’re ordering the appetizer. Smartphones that educate you on the deal next door (as you are eyeing the price tag on an item to buy in the store you’re in) educate you towards a smarter purchase. What if every time you had a question and wanted more information, you could access it via a custom teaching moment that helps you learn more and become networked into other people’s knowledge bases? Then, everyone becomes a potential teacher!
Sharing Information to Create New Worlds
These mini-blurbs of useful information are as powerful as hour long classes and can influence daily actions of millions of people, creating new social movements. If you can learn what you need from someone willing to share their knowledge, then you open up opportunities for people who cannot pay for it via expensive tuitions. You create a mindset where people become less dependent on institutions and more interdependent on each other. That can only be a good thing.
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