Response to Johnson's article

After reading the first few paragraphs of Johnson’s article, I thought to myself, I would have no idea where Baghdad would be located on a map. I began to realize that I too have begun to depend on the Internet to provide information on call much like that of the location of Baghdad. As my secondary teaching area is Social Studies, it appears that unlike in the 50’s and 60’s where most learning was done out of a text book, I will be unable to keep up to date with the vast amount of information the Internet provides. As Lauren pointed out in her blog, in the next decade or so our roles will switch from teacher to that of a facilitator. I agree that it must then become our job to help our students sift through the vast amount of information the Internet provides. It is important to remind our students that although the Internet does provide a large amount of accurate information, there are also many unreliable sources to be found. When looking to the future it is apparent to me that the use of electronic devices within the classroom will continue to grow. With this growth, teachers must take on the role of guiding our students through this information and explaining the relevance of the information to what we are covering in our course material. In this sense, we will be providing our students with a much wider spectrum of information. I believe this will have a positive impact on our students, especially in my field of Social Studies, as it is important to view information with a critical perspective to gain a better understanding of the material being covered. Perhaps our BC education system should introduce the use of electronic devices within the classroom sooner than later if we wish to provide our students with “the new world of information”.