What's the role of the teacher?

The term I used to name de new role of the teacher, lurer, has a negative connotation in English; maybe in another languages too.  To  let me know about it Ariel, very gently, sent me the following twitts.

Kristina Hoeppner went farther, looked up the term and shared in the comment area: "A lot of times, at least in my understanding of the term, luring is used to make people do something they would never do on their own. I don't have a great idea for a possibly better word to use. All seem to have a somewhat negative implication attached to them."

About the teacher's role she says:  "I think we do not only have one role but many, maybe sometimes packaged all together, sometimes only one or a dominant one."

Nancy White, with her bright mind and warm spirit came by to share that "In the facilitation world, an alternative term is "invitation." It has been long recognized in that domain that it is often more successful to invite people in rather than to require them. And that the quality of the invitation matters -- how do we make it irresistible?"

As I mentioned in my previous post, the name given to the teacher is the less important part.  What matters is what you do and how you do it, if you engage with learning honestly you'll set an example for your learners.  Your words may be taken away by the wind but your actions remain to drag others along the wonderful learning path.

Jenny explains the above much better in her post called "A Good Teacher".  I totally agree with her: "She (Nancy) is recognised world-wide, but her humility and obvious desire to be one of the learning group and not apart from it, is the mark of a good teacher." Nancy made a deep impression in my soul, she's always present

In another venue, Allison Miller states that "Teachers already have e-moderating skills.  They just need to analyse what you currently do face to face–and then convert it to online".

What do you think?.  According to your views, what's the role of the teacher?.   If you are a good f2f teacher, does that qualify you be be a good online teacher too?.  If not, what else do you need to develop to become one?

Answer to Sharon's invitation

Dear Sharon:

Thanks for your invitation! I would love to join your group.
Certainly my future students will benefit, I need to find out which is their English level first. I am planning to start the course in June; if I learn faster then I could start sooner. Would that be alright for you? How long does your course last?

I may be getting myself into something too big to handle but I really want to learn how to teach with e-tools, being in touch with you will allow me to see an e-teacher at work, thanks for the opportunity, I feel honored.
It will have to be mainly an online course, to get the local bunch together is not easy; on working days our gatherings are at 9:00 PM which leads to complaints from their parents because they do not want to leave my house at 10:00 PM and the neighborhood is not safe for them to walk home. The other available day is Sunday afternoons, if their parents do not get them away to visit relatives.

I am thinking about several names for the course, the first that came up was Aunt Comet's Course, my nephews and nieces call me Comet because they seldom see me and when I go to San Luis I get them in a swirl of temporary activities with us. Then came Becoming an e-Learner (BaeL) which sounds great but scary to me.

I do not know how Wikispaces work so I was thinking about PBwiki, I will explore Wikispaces to have a look. I need to place in a wiki a survey to see which are their abilities with the computer, the chat they use is hotmail because they like all the moving gadgets. I will have to start by introducing them to YH mail and chat, and to Skype; both programs run without graphic cards.

I was thinking about blogger to set a course blogg to show their progress. I still need to learn more about blogger myself to teach them in turn to open theirs. I want the blogg to have a clock, voice tool and chat tool set in a fixed way at the sides of the page, let me find out how to do that.

Some cybers around here have mics, I need to go to the ones they visit to assess them. Do you know which voice tool works without a graphic card? Yakpak comes with PBwiki but I have not tried it in a limited PC. Skype and Yahoo voice work fine.

Love: Maru

First Invitation for BaeL Project

Maru,
Would it benefit your students to be in contact with English speaking teens that are learning Spanish? Perhaps just in a very basic wiki (http://wikispaces.com or http://pbwiki.com) to correspond in simple sentences and with a voice tool. Do you have the ability to use
microphones?

You are welcome to join yourself and them in http://tlgplace.ning.com That may be overwhelming for them - but you could check.

You could also set them up with blogs (http://blogger.com or http://edublogs.org) - then, I could get some American students to reply to their posts. That may motivate them to continue.

If any of these ideas seem good and you would like some assistance, just let me know as I am happy to help.
Sharon

Educational Technology Coordinator