In this day and age, I think a teacher is more like a pipeline, who delivers knowledge to students. In other words, a teacher is a knowledge carrier; without the carrier, knowledge cannot be easily passed on to the students. Knowledge cover all the fields in our lives so that no one can acquire all of them. For teachers, the knowledge that they can teach to their students is limited, but it doesn't mean that teachers cannot use other methods to broaden students' scope of knowledge. For example, teachers can tell students where they can learn more knowledge as well as obtain more information, or teachers can instruct the students in the efficient learning method. In my opinion, how a teacher leads his/her students to learn is more important than the knowledge itself. Just as mentioned in the article Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age written by George Siemens, "The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe."
More importantly, teachers should make sure that the pipeline is leading to a right direction. What I to say is that teachers' decisions of what to teach and how to teach place huge influences on students. It's essential for a teacher to teach his or her students the knowledge that is advancing with the times.Today, human beings have embarked upon the information era, so it's the teachers' responsibility to let their students know how to learn in the information epoch. For example, teachers can equip their students with the consciousness of connectivsim. In the infromation era, teaching students how to learn in the network is increasingly important. Like the video The Impact of Social Media on Learning says, when people use internet tools to have a dialogue with others, it's undoubtless that people can learn from each other's thoughts or learn how to express themselves. Communication can not only bring the increase of knowledge, but also can build people's ability of critical thinking. Therefore, the decision of what to teach can determine what kind of knowledge can students learn from. Where the pipe is leading to should be considered seriously by the teachers.
As teachers, it's vital to instill knowledge into students; what's more, teachers should lead students to a right and broad way.
I like your analogy of a teacher as a pipeline leading to a broad set of resources and nodes for students. There is so much information available that it is important that the teacher encourage students to connect with good sources and, as you have mentioned, to think critically about and respond to the information they find.
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