Is teaching still relevant?

Throughout history, to become educated was to join the collective of human thought. To participate, we needed a pass key. Our very oldest tradition in handing over the key is teaching: One human sharing collected knowledge with another human.

As time moves on humans continue to acquire tools, many aiding this process of teaching -- of passing knowledge to the next generation. Songs, stories, written language, paper, books, an eventually the printing press brought ever wider groups of people into contact with this always-expanding collection of human knowledge.

And so we can read Pliny the Youngers first-hand account of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii and can see the notebooks in which DaVinci captured his inventions. This collection of knowledge is the single most powerful human creation.

Aiding each generation passing along and preserving this living trove of our collective genius, there were teachers. Not always as we think of them now, tethered to school buildings. But individuals able to collect, communicate and pass their knowledge along.

Today the latest development in storing and retrieving human collective thought, the Internet, brings a major disruption to this tradition of human-to-human conference.

Anyone can access this collective -- nearly all of it -- with a handheld device that most of us carry in our pockets. Individuals have available much more information than ever before. Some of it factual and well reasoned, some of it incendiary and one sided. Quite a lot of it is trivial and frankly salacious.

So now, more than any other time in human history, the individual chooses how and what parts of this vast and ever expanding collection are compelling and meaningful to them.

This rise in access to information parallels in this country the decline in regard for teachers. This hardly seems coincidental. Since we no longer need to visit a building and interact with an expert to gain facts and information, what use have we for a teacher?

While the point of access has changed the need for filtering these facts with experience and wisdom has not.  In redefining this role we must analyze what is needed in this new era. Is the acquisition of facts and data enough?

This is the second role of the teacher. Not just a distributor of information, they also provide context. Knowledge is more than just a list of facts. It is also this context and analysis that can change facts into action and expression.

The Internet offers a vast and deep sea of information. In this era of omni-availability of data we must recognize the importance of offering guidance as students interact with information. Self selecting the latest celebrity gossip about Kim Kardashian is simply not the same as participating in a lively debate about the sociological implications of the suffrage movement.

Teachers are not just there to distribute information, but now serve as cartographers of this new ocean. They tell the stories that give our collected knowledge context. They expose us to new ways of combining our experiences and introduce us to subjects we might never have self selected.

As our education becomes ever more personal and individualized there comes an even more pressing need to have an expert guide us at certain points along the way.

Comment below to define the debate - is the Internet fundamentally redefining teaching?  What do you think?

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Teaching can be like a field trip back to 1982. Phone access is limited and the web is filtered (if it is working at all that day).

So trying to stay productive in a web 2.0 world can be a challenge.

1982 called - they want their technology back

One of the best tools I have developed over the past few years is adapting the principles of David Allens GTD to the classroom.

The system is pretty inclusive, and you can read about it in lots of details in his books. For me there are two parts that have worked especially well in the classroom.

The first is changing how you tag your to do list. I used to keep it by noun- or topic. So it was sorted by APCS, Intro class, or Website. In other words I listed things by what part of my job they were related to.

Which had nothing to do with WHAT I actually had to do.

So now I keep the list by verb. By what I actually need to do. So I have a phone call category and a errand school category. And grade and email categories, you get the idea.

As you all know just getting to the phone or to the office to check your mailbox can be a real challenge. I want to make sure when I get to use the phone I have a full list of ALL the parents I need to call. If I am going to make the 5 minute trek to the front office (my lab is in the absolute back corner of the school) I want to make sure I have everything I need with me.

To support this I built a binder specifically for my planning period where I stick all the paperwork that fits these categories, so everything is in one place when I actually get planning time. That typically is about 30 - 45 minutes a day, so that time is pretty valuable.

I use Remember the Milk for my list. It makes filtering by activity super simple and I can add things on my phone. There is a free version of the app.

The second part I really use is the weekly review. The idea is you regularly go through all of your inboxes - email, mailbox, papers to grade, all of it, and you build and capture what is there and what needs doing. This year I am managing these reviews about every other week due to my limited planning time.

Again, there are tons of web resources out there describing different takes on this. I keep it pretty basic. The idea is everything you touch (or open in the case of email) gets planted somewhere. For me it is either a to do, something to store and reference later, or trash/recycle.

Included in this is a review of the calendar. I look over the past few weeks to see if there is anything unfinished still hanging out there, and look ahead and cross check my lesson plans so I am not tying to do a class discussion on the day of the senior picnic.

Anyhoo, I keep getting asked this year how I get everything done. Frankly I dont, but having this system in place lets me really concentrate when I need to without worrying that I am forgetting something. And sometimes the appearance of efficiency is almost the same thing.

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