Editing Encyclopedia:Colloquium/archives/December 2006 (section)

== Student vs. Teacher ==

I would like to introduce the idea that Wikipedia not differentiate between students and teachers categorically. I think the idea of a community should acknowledge that a lot of teaching happens between students, occasionally students teach teachers new ideas, and teachers are always learning to keep up with their materials. I would like to see a system where learners share resources and help each other find what they need to learn. It is important that learners not feel like they have to passively consume information, but can be active participants in creating their education. I know that wikis are designed with this in mind, but I would like to suggest not categorizing users according to the definition of "student" or "teacher". All users of wikiversity should be "learners". --[[User:Iwoj|Iwoj]] 05:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
:I think that is how it is suppose to be, though some people still fashion themselves as "the" teacher, since they are the only ones creating material on a particular subject.  Once more people start contributing, I'll guess we'll see that debate. (I'm not looking forward to moving the 1000 pages in, for example the film school, to reflect that no one person is the teacher.)--[[User:Rayc|Rayc]] 05:42, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

:[[Wikiversity:Learning goals]] and related pages should make it painfully clear that students should feel free to start exploring their learning goals at Wikiversity without waiting for experts to show up first. Wikiversity has participants who edit the web pages. To the extent that you learn while editing, you can think of your self as a student or a learner. When others learn something from what you have contributed you are functioning like a teacher. --[[User:JWSchmidt|JWSchmidt]] 21:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

:This is a good idea, but the best way is to shouw it. Many wikiversity users are not able to imply this. We have one phrase in Czech: ''"Those ones who know they know and those ones who dont know they teach"''. It means that we are studying by teaching, sometimes more, than by studying.--[[User:Juan|Juan]] 20:38, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

:Iwoj, you are absolutely right. Some people will want to share their knowledge, and it is not a problem for them to be teachers here. However, in a collaborative space such as this, we all must be learners - since we simply can't know everything about everything, or, at least, we can benefit from listening to other perspectives. :-) This is the essence of a "learning community", where we can all move between the roles/identities of student/learner/teacher/facilitator. And to Juan, I think the English equivalent of that phrase is: "The best way to learn about something is to teach it". [[User:Cormaggio|Cormaggio]] <sup><small>[[User talk:Cormaggio|talk]]</small></sup> 11:17, 7 January 2007 (UTC)