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Theological education, part 2

The context of theological education is one that , from where I sit, spans across nearly every discipline. We look at sociology and psychology, health and welfare, family and sexuality, environment, crime, poverty, technology, philosophy, in addition to the classical theological disciplines. Nowhere is there a broader spectrum of information that could not be considered of value to the theological student. With the technology of search and retreival as well as storage of those items on which we run the search, the field is radically advancing every day. CDROM storage and now recording has made it easy for small institutions to "electronically" archive and publish on CDROM and across networks.

Professors can now amass their years of research and ongoing study onto CDROMs and put it out on a campus network for students to use and peruse, and pull down and edit their own versions on their desktop, then place it back up for class comment and interaction. The original copy stays intact, and "edited" copies can be ID'd with student name so that all can see the attached comments, or further references, perhaps with information for automatically "linking" to the actual computer file on the original computer where the reference was found, so that the student who reads of a reference can instantly go to that originating server computer via the Internet. It's worldwide hypertext! This exists now and is in use on the internet!

Article on Virtual Classroom

I forsee a day within this decade when a professor, from wherever he may be, can videotape a presentation, "record" it or capture it to a computer compressed file, place it on the network, along with any of those "hypertext links" to references (perhaps themselves video or graphics or supported by sound), and students can see the lecture played back on their PC (or some local capmpus server capable of distributing networked multimedia), and stop it at any point to add their comments (in whatever form) along with appropriate and available "links".

I can think of no other educational discipline than that of theological study where persuasion along with an educated understanding of a subject is quite so important . After all, what we are dealing with here is trying to understand it all and do what we can. Of course no one can understand it ALL, but the mere fact of the amount of information that is available to us makes it valuble to have a way to manage it all. NOt only does CMC allow access to morequantities of information, but it allows us to filter and search for the things which more completely address our needs.

For all my complaining about the slowness of theological institutions to "wake up and smell the coffee", there are people in this same community who have noticed, and who have taught me to appreciate the capabilities at our disposal, or as David Lochhead put it, to see the computer as a "possibility machine".

There is Ken Bedell, who, as God would have it, was my advisor in the MARC program while I was at United. I went because of Dennis Benson and the video Production aims, and came away with a vision that was clearly more influenced by Ken. At the beginnings of my student work there, I was not really understanding what all the excitement about computers was about. I understood them to be a useful productivity tool, but I was not yet aware of the educational possibilities, for theological education in particular. I also had yet to experience the online community.

Ken got me immediately involved by getting me on a work study project in distance education with Mary Olson and himself. That work culminated in a n experimental videoconference via satellite from the PBS affiliate in Dayton, and seen by church groups across the country. In all, we had around 15 sites, and had a live national discussion on church renewal with a local successful pastor and United Seminary president Len Sweet (the latter of whom was off site via phone, with our audio patched back to him, and his voice coming into the studio. ) It was a great experience to begin to "play" with the communication potentials in communications technologies. I think that very soon, videoconferencing will be done primarily via computer on ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) which makes available several separate channels in one connection that can carry two way video and audio, as well as data, so that participants can hold a "Multimedia Conference call" via telephone or perhaps "cable" via lines owned by the cable companies.

My meeting on Ecunet (A Compuserve for the Church) has put me in touch with some of the church's best and most capable information and computer specialists. Indeed, this little community of ours here has been a wonderful source of personal inspiration, affirmation, and information.

I also realize that there are scores of creative minds in ministry now who have only to get themselves exposed and acclamated to the technology before they too will launch out with abandon with a vision for utilization that will shake foundations. I hope I can be in that company.

Members of my family have often told me through the years that they wouldn't be surprised to see me teaching at a seminary someday. I always dismissed this notion, and recoiling in horror at the thought of my trying to lecture in New testament or Church History or systematic theology (no offense David----it's just that I couldn't feel confident enough in my own willingness to passionately research my field.) But with this idea of Education technology, I think I could do good courses in Online resource usage and gathering, Internet skills (although I myself am still learning quite a bit), multimedia presentation skills, and Electronic Bible research and study tools. These seem to be quite important skills for communicators of the future (indeed, today).