"Module 2B-5: Assignment 1" was heavily based on the article "The Seven Roles of the Teacher" by Emilia Potenza. The first line in the article reads "You may or may not know of the seven roles of the teacher". This immediately caught my attention because I generally view such authoritative pronouncements with skepticism. One expert might conclude there are seven roles of a teacher, while another might with equal assurance claim that there are ten. So we were not off to a great start.
Nevertheless, I did find the article quite interesting. The first role discussed was that of learning mediator. As a mediator, the teacher is required to setup "a dialogue between the learner and various sources of information". A part of this duty is to "construct appropriate learning environments". I quite agreed with this concept.
The next role described was that of "Interpreter and designer of Learning Programmes and materials". The author asserted that this is perhaps the role that has been most misunderstood and abused". Initially, I thought "hmm, I am probably misreading something here because to me this is the one of the most widely discussed role of the teacher". However, as I think about it, there is some question about the extent to which I as a teacher have had control over the curriculum to be taught.
I felt that the role of "Leader" overlapped with that of mediator and the distinction became blurred in my mind. In general, I think the roles mentioned were roles of teachers, but as laid out, there was not always enough distinction to merit separate classifications. So I found the article to be nice butI was not totally satisifed at the end of the reading.
The assignment itself was very involved but for the most part, I simply modified files that I have used in the past. It did result in me creating my first zip file so that was good.
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