The Role of the Teacher When it Pertains to Learning and Understanding 21st Century Tools

On top of everything else that a teacher must be concerned with, there is even more we need to concern ourselves with in the 21st Century. We need to ensure that we are not only educating students on how to use the tools available to them, but how to do so properly with respect to copyright and licensing. Although as educators, we do have a little bit of leeway with respect to providing copyrighted materials for the purposes of educating, our students may misconstrue this use and fail to understand how important it is to cite any information that is not owned by them.

I have seen many teachers using various forms of multimedia in the classroom without citing their sources, especially teachers who are not particularly "tech friendly". It is so easy to overlook and with such time constraints sometimes in the planning phase of our lessons, sometimes priority has to go to just putting the material together so that we can present it to our students. We need to try and take a few minutes and just create a Resources slide or section on what we present to students. If we do this every time, students will begin to recognize a pattern and can use it as an example of what to do in their own work.

The role of the teacher is to be an example. Yes, there will be times where we will explicitly dictate what must happen in an assignment, lesson, etc., but we need to model the behaviour we expect from our students. It is part of the gradual release of responsibility we are hoping to impart on our students. At some point, we need to cut the cord and allow the students to take charge and be independent.