Stephen Downes

This is a transcript where David Webster talks about "how to make our bit of the world (be that classroom, VLE site, or tutorial meeting) one that promotes and rewards actual thinking and nurtures concentration and an actual appetite for disciplinary engagement." It's a good article and worth reading in full, but I want to focus on one bit near the end. Webster says, "If we want students to care about understanding or thinking, they need to encounter people who visibly care about understanding - who are rapaciously curious. If we want them to tolerate uncertainty, they need to see uncertainty handled without panic. If we want them to revise their thinking, they need to see revision as a sign of seriousness rather than weakness." I've long talked about the role of the educator being 'to model and demonstrate'. That's what this is. That's where our focus should be. That (I hope) is what I've always tried to do in this newsletter.