Connected classroom

Twice in the last week I've heard about the impact of wireless on the classroom. William Mitchell discussed it in the keynote speech at ACRL last week (Caveat Lector has a blog entry about it). Yesterday, Rochelle wrote about the Read/Write Classroom in Diary of a Subversive Librarian. This all has me thinking about teaching.

I have been asked on several occasions if I want to get a Ph.D. in LIS. I considered it most seriously when it began to dawn on me that I want teaching to be a major component of my career as a librarian. But it seems to me there is a big difference between teaching as a professor and teaching as a librarian.

Professors teach from a lofty place--"I know more than you do and I'm here to bestow that knowledge upon you." If asked, most teachers will claim that they learn from their students, but I've heard that said sincerely to a college class twice. I suspect it was not coincidence that both of those professors were women.

Librarians on the other hand, are not expected to know all the answers. When you don't know all the answers, you are in a better position to be a partner in learning with student--a much more fun, from my perspective, way to be a teacher.

William Mitchell said that this new environment in the classroom changed his teaching style. The implication was that while you might be able to pretend to be smarter than a classroom full of graduate students, there is no way to compete with a classroom full of graduate students armed with the entire Internet, including the databases from the library. His role has become more one of guide or director than fountain of knowledge. Now, that's a kind of teaching I could enjoy.

I want to be a librarian. But it's nice to have a Plan B.

My Digital Libraries class, by the way, has something of the same feel as a wireless classroom. Since it's on-line and asynchronous, everyone has an opportunity to do research as the discussion progresses and they often do--posting "here's what I found and here's what I learned from it." It feels like a kind of team discovery mission. A very good way for everyone involved to learn from each other.     #

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