Nowadays we are bombarded with plenty of information; sometimes we even
have the feeling that teachers are no longer needed because if we want to cultivate our intellect, we only have to google what we want to learn. As a result we need to ask ourselves as future teachers the following question: What is the role of the educator
in this reality after all?
I would say that one of the roles of the teacher should be to provide students with elements that can help them to develop critical thinking towards the world they live in. According to this video taken from YouTube titled “Teaching in the 21st Century” (video below), the educator has to guide the students and help them search for information that is reliable, meaningful and relevant in their environments. For example, teachers may give the students a list of links -analyzed before suggesting them- that they can visit so as to complete a task given. After that, teachers can ask students a series of questions to help them be critical towards the information. This is mainly the role of the educator in this process of surfing the web.
I would say that one of the roles of the teacher should be to provide students with elements that can help them to develop critical thinking towards the world they live in. According to this video taken from YouTube titled “Teaching in the 21st Century” (video below), the educator has to guide the students and help them search for information that is reliable, meaningful and relevant in their environments. For example, teachers may give the students a list of links -analyzed before suggesting them- that they can visit so as to complete a task given. After that, teachers can ask students a series of questions to help them be critical towards the information. This is mainly the role of the educator in this process of surfing the web.
Another question that is also important to be answered is: What are the aspects
that a teacher should consider when evaluating a website? I clearly understand that the teacher should
provide the students with reliable links. Now, the doubt is what makes a
website reliable? Taking into consideration what we -my classmates and I-
mentioned in our lessons, I would share with you a list of items to consider when evaluating a
webpage:
- The authors of the page.
- The lay-out: how the information is presented in the page.
- The font chosen.
- The images used.
- The appropriateness of the language for a school context.
- If there are evidences that the information in the webpage is gradually updated.
- Pay attention to the purpose of the webpage.
These are some of the most important points to bear in mind before
suggesting a link to the students.
Thanks for reading,
I will be posting soon J
Hi Cin! I really enjoyed your post and I found it very interesting since one of the most frequent questions all teachers have is: Which is our role as educators in a world surrounded by technology and information easy to access? As we know, everything is at our hand with just a click. We can access to different kind of information in a matter of seconds and without even the need of moving from or houses.However, this video show us that having unlimited access to information is not enough. We can search as many things as we want by using the internet, but, as the video shows, this is not a guarantee that everything we found is reliable. Thus, despite the fact that we have lost the role of being the only source of information, we are now the "filter" of information by teaching our students to develop critical thinking and to teach them different skills to use in order to let them evaluate the information they find. We,as the video clearly shows, have the responsibility of making our students to THINK, EXPLAIN, JUSTIFY, and EVALUATE, not just copy and paste or take everything they find on the internet as reliable information.
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