What does it mean to teach?

A big part of teaching is reaching the person being taught and building a  bond that permits knowledge sharing
A teacher's mission is to engage the curiosity of his or her students and encourage them to discover first, how to learn, then what to learn.  Once the student learns to learn, the teacher assumes the role of a facilitator in the knowledge acquisition process. 

If you want to become a teacher, I encourage you to think about the following:
  • Assuming you take pride in what you do for a living, you cannot become a (good) teacher overnight, so if you're in a rush, look for another profession
  • If the prospect of being seen as a positive role model is daunting to you, reconsider your reasoning for pursuing a career in teaching
  • If you are uncomfortable with failure, or letting others fail, come to terms with the fact that you will not have learned how to teach until you have failed your students or your students have failed you
  • If the success of your students is not amongst your highest priorities, they will see it in you before you see it in yourself 

All teachers are learners but not all learners are teachers - do you agree?
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The first group of students I ever taught - Bursa, Turkey - July 2011

How can technology mediate teaching and learning?
I can count on one hand the number of weeks I spent as a classroom teacher. It just wasn't for me. Standing in front of a large room of students is daunting, and exhausting. Half the time I had no idea what I was doing, wondering if these students were actually learning or just going through the motions. The expectation that my office carried was that of an expert in the field instead of a participant in an intellectual journey. 

And trust me, I was no expert. 

Surely there had to be a way to put the reins of the learning process in the hands of students themselves. Immersion, exploration, situation-based learning - these were concepts that intrigued me.

So I took to investigating this new frontier, one that was supposedly disrupting traditional education as it had existed for centuries. I stumbled upon the online learning landscape, a hodgepodge of  buzz words - blended learning, flipped classrooms, MOOCs, distance learning, e-learning, etc... What does it all mean? Is it all just hype?

I don't think so. Regardless of the medium in which people choose to learn, the fundamentals of teaching remain the same. And the possibilities of technology-mediated education are truly spectacular.