Traveling this summer, I had the luxury of reading an actual physical book. In these Orwellian times of 24/7 information overload, I was expecting mechanical hounds from Fahrenheit 451 to track me down to help incinerate my guilty pleasure. What remarkable, yet frightening times we live in, when reading a book becomes a novelty.
A heady thought to consider is that students entering elementary schools may never remember what holding a book a book feels like before they graduate from high school. With school districts across the nation facing 21st Century technology, the promise of change from an industrial revolution form of education is at least on the agenda, instead of in a file, marked denial.
Eight years ago, I returned to education after nearly a decade in television, hoping to integrate an interactive entertainment delivery system, along with the student driven approach and accountability I grew up with in the Danish academic system. In the past three of five years in independent study, technology is emerging as the vehicle that will bring my vision to fruition.
In increments, I have moved. First, through a master’s degree in Instruction Technology and Distance Education, and then in launching a virtual campus using a learning management system. Steps of knowledge and progress, but not defined by direction.
It was my passion for the We the People curriculum from Civeced.org, which gave my vision a cause. It propelled me into a graduate certificate in Educational Digital Media and Technology in a quest to learn more and set an end date for the completion of a collaborative online, independent study model that would enable smaller classes and distance education students to become a part of a life-shaping course.
Four months later, certificate in hand, disappointed and depressed over what didn’t get done, my professor asked; “Do you feel you are on the right road, or have a clearer vision of what is needed to complete what you started?”
This is my narration of the “right road”. The old-school book, with New Digital Journalism. The stunt woman and the school teacher . And the editor/graphic designer with the global studies historian. Hillary Clinton penned; “It Takes a Village.” I say in these times of change and innovation, it takes an enigma.
Enigma – a person of puzzling or contradictory character.