Abstract
Through out the years, teaching has evolved with each passing generation and adapted to the new technologies and new ways of instructing as the latest research is published. For example, once typing was taught with manual typewriters, then electric typewriters. Now, the courses are called keyboarding and they are taught on computers. Currently, the teaching platform is evolving into a virtual world with collaborative, interactive web technologies. Addressing teaching from a learner-centered approach, this chapter will discuss the evolution of teaching as new generations of adults enter the learning environment and examine a case study of one instructor’s journey in incorporating new Web 2.0 technologies into courses.
TopBackground
The classroom for the adult learner has evolved over the past 30 years. In the 1970s, Paulo Friere (1994) was writing about the need to move away from the “banking approach” to education. The instructor would simply pour the knowledge from their head into the students’ heads. There was no discussion or incorporation of the students’ experiences or previous knowledge. The student was just a passive partner in the event of learning. Friere (1994) believed the learning should instead involve the learners and engage the learners in what they wanted to learn or needed to learn. For him, the learning must resonate with the learners’ culture, not the instructor’s.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Social Scholarship: Combining the use of print research with collaborative capabilities of Web 2.0 technologies as a means to developing new research and scholarship.
Baby Boomers: Born between 1946 and 1962.
Web 2.0: The interactive, interconnected, open source data world available to anyone via the high bandwidths which allow rich media transmissions; it is using the Internet to collaborate and share among users, rather than as a network.
GenXer (Generation X-ecutive): Born between 1963 and 1980.
Weblogs: (blogs) is an online journal in reverse order (showing the more recent entry first).
Generational Attitude: Guiding principles of a certain cohort of people shaped by common historical experiences.
Millennials: Born between 1981 and 2000, also referred to as the Net Generation or Nexters.
Wikis: A website which can be updated by allowed members. It is an excellent tool for collaboration (especially when members are geographically dispersed).