It won’t take you long on social media to find someone inviting recommendations for books, podcasts, TV shows, or other cultural goods. (In the choral world, the most common posts in conductor discussion groups are looking for [1] repertoire recommendations and [2] behavioral problem suggestions.)
Step back for a second, though. Surely the editors and writers of the New York Times Book Review are better read and more insightful than your Facebook friends. So logically their recommendations should be a “better” than social media. An aggregator like Rotten Tomatoes is going to deliver a better sense of expert consensus on a movie, too.
So why do we seek recommendations from our friends?
Because they’re personal. They’re personal because they are from someone we trust, and they’re personal because they are intended just for us.
Educators must do the same thing. Make your education personal.
The Khan Academy is going to have better math lessons than the average high school teacher, and 5-minute guitar lessons from an expert on YouTube can be cheaper, repeatable, and better organized than your local instructor.
What they can’t be is personal. As an educator, focus more on the individual. What do you have to offer, and what do you know about your students than can influence how you offer it.
The more personal you make your teaching, the more you will see better outcomes, connection, and engagement, and the less replaceable you will be by a machine.