====================
What is my job here?
====================
- Ian! D. Allen - idallen@idallen.ca - www.idallen.com

After watching Dan Brown's critique of education:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4

I asked:  If information is free, what is my job here at Algonquin?

A student replied:

    I have pondered this question extensively, even to a near sleepless
    nights, and I have finally gotten my answer.

    You asked us, on day one, What your job is? Since you are not supposed
    to deliver facts, what is your job?

    While his points make a large degree of sense, I personally believe
    that he is wrong. Dan Brown may have decided that you need to change
    how you teach your class because " all the facts are on the internet
    for free ", but factual presentation is not only the standard of
    education, it is the FOUNDATION of education. As a result, you
    yourself are obligated to deliver us facts. Otherwise, you are not
    a teacher. Not to mention, who is Dan Brown to decide who YOU are
    as a teacher? Are his words facts just because we didn't pay for them?

    But, however, the question now shifts; what facts are you supposed
    to present to us? Obviously not just any facts, because they are on
    the internet and they are free.

    However, as you yourself pointed out today, you have run a computer
    for somewhere upwards of 30+ years without a single issue on your
    computer. This is a fact; but a fact that was NOT accessible on the
    internet, without prior knowledge of you yourself, whom we would
    never have met before taking this course.

    Therefore, what are we paying for? What is your job?

    Your job is to sell the core concepts of Linux to us, the
    consumers. You said it yourself; you never use a Windows OS machine
    at home. We saw in the lab today the frustrations that can be
    wrought from Windows. But your job is to give us the core concepts
    of Linux in a way that inspires adventure and creativity. Giving
    us a lab to set things up is fine, and reading the details is fine
    and dandy, but with these facts that we NEED as entry level Linux
    users to inspire us to poke and prod beyond the directions you set
    for us. Giving us the opportunity to go, as you put it yourself,
    "okay, so that's how I do that. Now what happens if I do this?"

    That, in my opinion, is your job: To sell the core concepts of Linux
    to entry level users in an attempt to inspire creative destruction
    and repairation of a preferred Operating System in ways unanticipated
    by the professor.

    At least, that is what my opinion is. But hey, it's just my opinion.

    Just like Dan Brown's. Take it for what you will.