- What is going well in the course
Mostly I enjoy the continual dialogue concerning the impact of technology on education. The research I am doing for the scholarly paper is opening my mind to so many new considerations. It’s really wonderful. Technology is creating a border dispute between the old-school “everything fitting neatly in a box” mentality and the new view of the next generation of barrier-free living. I used to think this was a generation gap. It’s really a border dispute. Some want to build fences. Others want to tear them down. What a time to be alive!
- What is not going so well in the course or your frustrations
The biggest challenge to me as a technology immigrant is to keep track of when assignments need to be done. I have taken more than a dozen course online and this particular course is not the easiest to follow in my experience. Every course instructor at NAU organizes their online syllabus and materials differently. I would have liked to see a consistent approach but instead have to re-navigate each course every semester. I chock it up to another learning opportunity.
- Your accomplishments
Probably not much here as yet. I’m only in the beginning stages and discovering the issues and arguments for and against the oncoming storm. We are on a collision course with a Cyborg destiny and Pedagogy as we have known it must adapt. We are at the end of the beginning as “The World is Flat” author has so poignantly noted. Web 3.0 is just around the bend and middle-of-the-road education is in the direct path of the storm.
- Your life as an online learner
I’ve been online since the days of bulletin boards. I was an early user of Compuserve when it was the new kid on the block and Prodigy’s competitor. I didn’t fall for the AOL intro when it arrived though some of my family did. I trained to be an internet consultant when it was estimated that there would be 1 million documents on the web and that perhaps $100 Million in transactions would be conducted via the web. Many scoffed. Since 1994 I’ve sold several million in promotional products via my own web based business. In the late ’90s, I was invited to speak to an international audience in Banff, Canada on the secrets to doing business on the Internet (though I kept my real secrets a secret). After more than a decade I wanted to return to education and wondered if online education would be of the same caliber and quality as classroom settings offered. I was pleasantly surprised to find that online challenged me to learn more. It’s easier to put up a facade in the classroom. Online is about content. Content is king and facades are unveiled quickly.
I’ve enjoyed this process so much that my goal of a Masters in Educational Technology is to personally help foster this new development. We are not here to define the borders but to unravel them so that the community may expand and broaden into the verdant technoscape of the future…which is now. 
