What’s your metaphor for teaching? For the past 1500 years or so, the dominant model for teaching has been the Socratic method. Not a bad model – it’s withstood the test of centuries. We can all see the image of the wizened philosopher, engaging his students in provocative dialogue – a relentless series of almost casual questions invariably forcing his students into a trap of their own making. Eventually, Socrates is always successful in getting his students to reverse their own initial statements, reaching a deeper, inarguable understanding. The Socrates model however is based on an ORAL tradition – that of the dialogue. In fact, Socrates was quite mistrustful of the new technology of his day – Writing.

I wouldn’t urge anyone to discard this model entirely, but perhaps we need to add a new metaphor for the information age. I like to turn to that semi-popular TV hero, McGuyver as a good model for teaching. McGuyver, if you recall, is the character who gets into all sorts of traps and difficult situations (not unlike Socrates’ students), but always manages to escape by making clever use of whatever is lying around – everyday objects and materials. It’s not the objects and materials themselves, but the way McGuyver combines and uses them. McGuyver has an uncanny ability to view stuff lying around as valuable resources simply by putting them together or using them with just the right knowledge.

Teaching on the web is a lot like a typical McGuyver adventure. You assemble the right resources and leave them lying around. Then you construct challenging situations for students so they use whatever you leave for them as a way to solve their problem, find their way out of a dilemma. What you want all of your students to become are McGuyvers, while we teachers – we’re the series screenwriting team that devise interesting and intricate plots to entangle our students in learning. Not perhaps the lofty image of the world’s greatest philosopher, but we won’t be drinking any hemlock either...