A Teacher is Like a Impeller

Ours is a day of rapid changes. With the tremendous development of global networks and the emergence of Web Services, it is possible to efficiently exchange data and communicate between entities. And the teacher’s role today more like an impeller who brings new learning method to students than a tutor. Why I metaphor like that? Just imagine what’s the function of impellers? Impeller can be used in pumps and water jets. And its function is to transfer power and promote large objects. So as the role of teacher, they transfer their knowledge and experience to the students and promote students to explore more information.

                     

Nowadays there occurs a learning theory for the digital age --- connectivism. “It is the integration of principles explored by chaos, network, and complexity and self-organization theories. ” Learning now changes its way from traditional one. “Connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is on longer an internal,individualistic activity, but provides insight into learning skills and tasks needed for learners to flourish in a digital era.” E-Learning or Distance Learning is a new method with the advent of information technology. So the teacher’s task gradually become teaching students how to use on-line tools for better study and how to search the information from the Internet.

George Siemens who is an author and editor of the eLearnspace website says “ your ability to share images with each other, your ability to share video clips? And share any content resource is a really you can do it through the conversation. I think it is tremendous important because our learning today is one of forming networks with each other, so our tools enable that effortlessly?? and the way is very human to us.”(from the video of the impact of social software on learning). I know about the influence in learning from the Internet, and it will do more good than harm. So as a teacher I hope to apply on-line tools to communicate with my students and teach them how to search and select useful information on the Internet by using Google scholar or Wikipedia.