Personal and Professional Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Personal and Professional Development - Essay Example Times have changed and are continuing to change as the gauntlet is transferred from one form of learning expertise to another. While previously it was enough for a teacher to be able to handle simple routine tasks, this definition has passed into oblivion in recent times. Above everything else, a teacher must be possessed with a vision to go forward and to explore new turf. Modern life is all about integration and modern teaching and learning are following the same path. Consider for example the state of communication that we exist in today. Only a few years ago it was common to have a phone at the office, a cellular phone in the pocket, a fax machine on the desk, a desktop computer and other such articles to deal with communication. Today all of these things have disappeared altogether. Everything is integrated. It is extremely common today to find all of this communication equipment and more (such as GPS, location tracking and the like) in a simple Smartphone that sits in your pocket. This trend of integration has not been limited to high end executives and CEOs alone. Instead integration has been sweeping the entire socio-economic strata from end to end. A Smartphone is as common in the Corner Office as it is with children attending high school these days. The key thing to take note of here is integration. Much similar to communication equipment, teaching and learning are becoming more and more constrained to integrate with other things in order to drive the efficacy and success of both. Modern careers are coming under increasing pressure to obtain individuals who have more than one area of expertise. The modern manager for a car repair business for example may need to know how to handle people, how to mix paint, how to repair fenders, how to create budgets and other such functions all at the same time. This situation is different from the specialization that was offered under the Fordist model of growth that calls for specialization. Instead a manager and a lead er today need to have essential skills in their bag to deal with the competitive nature of the market. This is only possible if the learning offered to the modern student is enough to handle the strains of modern careers. Modern learners need to be offered various avenues to explore their own potential in order to produce individuals who are ready to pick the gauntlet and walk with it. Traditional methods of learning including blackboards and hard printed books are all but things of the past. The modern learner is far more interested in finding the information they require using digital methods rather than having to search through volumes of printed material. It could be expected that children would need to be taught how to extract information. However, in the modern day this situation is nowhere to be found. Instead the teacher is at times learning from students as to extracting information from the internet. Modern students are well equipped and prepared to handle the information t