Information Communication Technology has changed my job in dramatic ways. I record my lectures with a Livescribe pen and upload them to my blog and Facebook. YouTube is now an online resource as well as Wikipedia, Google, Digg, Delicious, and hundreds of other sharing sites. The St. Louis fed offers online learning modules that can replace the teacher with a more knowledgeable instruction complete with interactives. These pedagogical changes in my profession has led many educational reformers like Bill Daggett to say something like "the teacher is now a facilitator and not a respository for information."
What the reformer means is that the teacher used to disseminate information that kids sucked up like a vacuum. That's one reason why teachers get paid on a scale that rewards educational attainment.
Microeconomics is about scarcity. A point made in The Price of Everything, by Russell Roberts, was that the material difference in the quality of life between the rich and poor is not as pronounced as 100 years ago. For example, today income earners in the lower 20% have a cell phone. An because the economy is producing a higher quality good, the clothes are of high quality. When you look at material goods, the standard of living really isn't that pronounced. Now, information is equally accessible to both classes. This leads reformers to say the teacher is now a facilitator. The implication is that a teacher will be replace by a computer and a security guard. But I think the teacher is a facilitator is wrong.
If information is free and equally accessible, then the teacher's job becomes to find a way for students to add value to their learning. Ways that a teacher can add value is by teaching students how to be creative, problem-solve, effectively communicate, and differentiate.
My profession has changed from providing content to adding value to the content.
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