Part of such a culture is understanding that the teacher is not the only expert in the room; in fact, students can know more than the teacher about some aspects of what they will be doing together.
Today's students are no longer the population our educational system was designed to teach. So how do I actively engage my students in learning situations that fulfill the requirements of higher education in the language and style of their digital culture?
Finnish system is praised extraordinarily highly for its global success, and yet students don’t work terribly hard, have many choices, use technology creatively, enjoy the integration of the arts, and learn in a culture which emphasizes depth over breadth and less is more.
Students are shown researching and collaborating online in their studies, and many classrooms are shown with a wide array of technological units, not just computers. Students use wikipedia and facebook when researching very current topics, and Wagner explains that there is a culture of trust that is extended to students in their technology usage.
A particularly inspiring moment comes when Wagner reports stumbling across a project at one school, the “Innovation Camp,” in which teams of students are given 26 hours to come up with a new product or service.
With the huge potential that Information and communication technology has to offer for teaching and learning also comes a matching potential for distraction, illicit and inappropriate activity, and poor judgement.
The teacher holds a cornerstone role in the development of understanding, the appreciation of culture and diversity, and the formation of the moral and ethical basis that, like the cornerstone of a building, provides a strong and stable foundation for life in both the real and virtual world they co-inhabit.
The most salient lessons are not learned by avoidance but by facing you action, its impact, and the consequences.
The teacher is no longer just the master of their subject. They are much, much more. Their classroom is no longer defined by four walls and a blackboard, but stretches far beyond the physical boundaries of their school. We are global teachers, ethicists, and moralists. We are masters of our subject and students of the world.
What a teacher can do – all a teacher can
do – is work with students to create a classroom culture, a climate, a
curriculum that will nourish and sustain the fundamental inclinations that
everyone starts out with: to make sense of oneself and the world, to become
increasingly competent at tasks that are regarded as consequential, to
connect with (and express oneself to) other people.