One of the biggest changes after my first semester of teaching is the idea that the way that I was taught will not be sufficient for today's students. With the plethora of information that is now accessible through the internet, it is really simple for the student to just Google what they need to know and move on. To keep the student engaged in the learning process, it becomes critical that the teacher moves away from disseminating information to the student, but to become a facilitator of learning for the students. 

The teacher must embrace this change immediately in my opinion. Thomas and Brown defined traditional teaching in their book A New Culture of Learning as "information is transferred from one person (the teacher) to another (the student)," (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p39). Today, the teacher is not needed to give information to the student; it is found freely through technology. With this abundance of information, today's students need to learn how to dig deeper into the topic or answer they seek to find out. Information changes very quickly in today's digital age; meaning that the "answer" is not one that is static, like we have once thought.

Thomas and Brown encourages the student and teacher to understand this concept and reminds us of the ideas of tinkering and play with new knowledge. "A child playing with a new toy and an adult logging onto the Internet, for example, both wonder, 'what do I do now? How do I handle this new situation, process this new information, and make sense of this new world?'" (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p48). As teachers, we need to recreate this scenario with our students inside the classroom. Giving the student the topic and overview, they seek to find the questions necessary to improve their knowledge on the "answer" of the questions. From here, it will be giving the students the opportunity to collaborate on the topic to expand each other's learning of the topic in question. More than ever, today's students need guidance from the teacher AND their classmates on the WHY behind the answer, not so much as just knowing the answer to the question.

More than ever before, the student is less engaged inside the classroom. With the distractions of finding other "things" to distract the student from learning, in addition to the outdated practices of lecturing and disseminating information from teacher to the student, the student does not feel compelled to learn anything. Answers can be found quickly, used, then forgotten. As educators, we need to find the ways to expand the learning process for the student, beyond the "knowledge" phase. 

Thomas and Brown discuss this idea throughout Chapter 7 of their book A New Culture of Learning. Beyond the concept of knowledge, they go into the process of engagement through making and play for the student. After the student obtains the knowledge from the teacher, the next suggested phase is for the student to make something with the knowledge. "Through the process of making, we are also learning how to craft context so that it carries more of the message, which helps solve many of the issues of information overload," (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p94). The idea that making an object or a higher level thought based on the knowledge obtained allows for the student to be able to apply the information into useful context is just as important as the information that is discussed.

With technology changing almost on a daily basis, the students are going to be more likely to understand how to use something before the teacher will be able to. Giving the freedom for the student to express their making through technology adds a level of creativity to their work, creating more ownership to their work. In addition, if the product being made is something that is designed to assist in the learning process for other students, there is a stronger likelihood that more thought and care will be placed into the work completed by the student. Today's student will seek out assistance from their classmates before speaking with the teachers, so utilizing projects of this nature that assist in learning for the whole class, you are creating the engagement that we all seek as educators.