Today’s Teacher: The Human Firewall
by A classroom begins and ends with the competencies of the teacher and a teacher used to be defined as an instructor. More and more districts have aligned with the more modern interpretations of a teacher and the teacher is now defined as a facilitator. Both the traditional classroom and the NTeQ (Integrated Technology) based classroom sees a teacher as being able to facilitate but also prescribes the teacher to run the classroom as such and to let the students be considered the researcher. Thusly, the teacher must be a human firewall.
Teachers who prescribe to model of education have to consider themselves as managers rather than lecturers. The traditional classroom may be able to thrive on a lecture-question-answer basis but the NTeQ classroom requires teachers to train and focus students to find the answers themselves using technology. Therefore, the teacher of this theory must be highly skilled in technology with a highly proficient level of ability on the computer.
The computer is an essential part of the NTeQ philosophy as it is the tool which is used to educate. The traditional classroom may or may not have access to a computer but the NTeQ classroom requires that computer be used for virtually every student function. Since the teacher is assuming the role of grand designer, manager and facilitator, the student becomes the researcher and therefore needs the computer so that all of the data found is current, up to date and maintained in an appropriate manner.
The teacher will then be placed in the unfortunate position of being a human firewall as the internet allows students access to virtually any piece of information ever recorded by humankind including text, pictures and video. Just because something is labeled “Pictures of Elba” and just because it is a lesson on Napoleon does not mean that those pictures will be of the island. Where technology fails to have common sense, the educator must step in to ensure protecting children from accessing such technological misrepresentations during their lessons. This is a problem that would not occur in the traditional classroom.
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On May 19, 2010 at 8:22 am
Does anyone know if there is asearch engine designed for school settings which can identify inappropriate material without using keywords as blockers?