As an educator, I find myself increasingly concerned with the messages I convey to my students. Communication is more than speeches or lectures. It is engagement. It is posture, eye contact, and gestures. And it is a passion for the subject matter we are discussing. One thing that can make all the difference in engaging students is in how we, as educators, present our lessons. Every moment is a potential lesson. And every student - EVERY student - is a potential leader of our future world.
One of the challenges we face is ensuring that our curriculum is meeting the needs or tomorrow's leaders. Today we find our society changing ever more quickly with an increasingly globalized technocracy. Students are so tech-savvy that they have come to see the world through the rose-colored glasses of instant gratification. We reheat food in the microwave in less than a minute. We send and receive messages across the globe just as quickly. Technology that used to take up a room now fits on a desktop in our home office. And yet, the basics of education are essentially the same. So is this a problem, or an opportunity to evolve?
One of the challenges we face is ensuring that our curriculum is meeting the needs or tomorrow's leaders. Today we find our society changing ever more quickly with an increasingly globalized technocracy. Students are so tech-savvy that they have come to see the world through the rose-colored glasses of instant gratification. We reheat food in the microwave in less than a minute. We send and receive messages across the globe just as quickly. Technology that used to take up a room now fits on a desktop in our home office. And yet, the basics of education are essentially the same. So is this a problem, or an opportunity to evolve?
As educators, we are left to wonder how we will impart a world's worth of information to students who don't want to have to sit still and read a book. Even if the information is presented in an online format, academia has become the bane of youth rather than the opportunity to improve oneself and progress toward a successful future. So the problem becomes finding a way to engage the online student. Teachers have to be well-versed in today's technology-driven multimedia tools. As educators, it is our responsibility to share in our students' capabilities as well as the social networking tools that drive much of their extra-curricular lives. Relating to students has to reach beyond knowing the popular magazines and television series. It is great if a teacher has read the latest fad-fiction - from Harry Potter to Twilight - but we must also be aware of how these fads are shaped and changed by worldwide online activities.
We can read a novel. But that novel may be produced as a film. Our students will be passionately connected to the actors who portray the characters with whom they have made personal connections. A video game may extend or alter the existing storyline. In the case of Twilight, the novel may be rewritten from the perspective of another character and published as an online work. And what of the YouTube generation who share and exchange opinions through the video blogosphere? Although we see a great deal of subjectivity projected through the medium, there is also an increasing level of theoretical data being converted into something more media savvy for public consumption - a process that began with Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
The point is that we, rather than our students, must learn to embrace the evolution of information from the printed text to more dynamic deliveries. Our students are growing up in a digital world. Teachers must become more than discussion leaders. We must become entertainers to a certain extent. There are teachers who will stand at the front of the class and talk at their students. And while it is a student's responsible to be engaged in the educational process, it is a teacher's responsibility to make that process engaging.
