My daily routine of online search for information both for academic as well as other purposes recently warned me of the narrowing gap between a teacher and his students in term of who is better informed of the latest development in a given field. A decade ago when academic publications were still taking the form of printed materials teachers had always been granted a faster access to the latest issues in his field than his students. This was because they were financialy able to afford such an access.
Nowadays, since the introduction of the internet, teachers (espescially those working in the internet connected areas or workplaces) no longer enjoy such monopoly and authority. The internet has made the opportunity to access any kind of information equal to everybody.The interned with its search engines radically reduced the amount of time needed for tracking the searched information into seconds, while, in fact, merelly a decade ago one had to wait for a couple of weeks to get a sight of the newly published books or journals.
So, teachers and lecturers, when you come to your classes, don't think that you are always better informed of your course than your students. They might have spent hours browsing and collecting the latest information about the topic you are going to present. They might be waiting for you with a bunch of information that you have never come accross. Get ready to listen to them, race with them to be the first to know!!!
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