Digital-Friendly But Learning-Focused: Action and Readings for Excellent Teaching

Abstract

SUBJECT AREA: classroom teaching.

Being digital (or at least heading there) is perhaps the most interesting forward-looking issue in the development of excellent teachers today. Society is awash in progressively higher tides of new information technology. For teachers, this creates a race to adapt, cheered by students who value flexibility and novelty, and by corporate partners who want their new recruits trained in the latest and greatest. However fleet of foot the instructor might be, the workout required to keep up with the pack is nontrivial. There is always new software or systems lying around the bend. The price tag for it all requires smelling salts for Deans. And though the invention and experimentation brings tangible rewards to the teaching enterprise, it also carries unintended adverse side effects. The finish line to this race keeps moving outward. And besides, as Gertrude Stein might have asked, is there a there there? I think the answer is "yes" though its shape is not obvious today. And getting there successfully depends crucially on the distinction between wisdom, knowledge, and information. This note offers some suggestions to guide the journey.

Past columns by Robert Bruner may be found by search at the SSRN website at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/search.taf or by going to his Author Page at SSRN at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=66030