Ken Bedell

From the time that Ken became my advisor for the MARC program,  until this day,  he has constantly remained the most personally accessible and encouraging persons I have ever known.  He seems to have identified key signs in me that suggested to him how to encourage that part of me without making it sound like a list of suggestions.  In fact,  I scarcely remember any "suggestions' at all,  as many of these things I have come to be involved with seem to be a natural outflow of who I am at any given moment,  but always seem to follow soon after I have had some extended conversations with Ken.  MY present job was directly because of a suggestion to my present employer by Ken,  and while there have been frustrations here,  the area of work, and the calling I feel to online community is not far removed from having some occasion to be heard here; it's just a few bits of evidence away,  or some key person's "seeing the light" conversion away.  

From the begnnings of my studenthood,  to well after,  Ken has remained as a friend and as a source of encouragement in my quest to find outlets for my calling;  which he understands better than anyone.  And why not?  I think I caught this "calling" from a lot of liitle pieces of enthusiasm he showed for a wide variety of issues surrounding the online world;  I caught it from investigating the details of things he introduced me to,  some insights he provided as to the significance of some of these things for the Church,  and trying out some of the "hands on" expperiences he always encouraged. 

When I was in between jobs,  he was offering me me little payed tasks that I could do to help him with his projects,  and since finding the job where I am now (or being led to it by his reccommendation),  has been a frequent sounding board for my joys and hardships regarding this experience. 

Ken got me involved early on in the online communication scene. There was a videoconferencing project I did with Mary Olson (then the director for the DMin/Continuing Ed program at United) ,  which she had become focused on as a means oif expanding the reach of the Continuing Education offered by the Seminary.  Since I had expressed an interest in Video Production,  and this was a project which required some research and technical considerations such as how to produce and make a videoconference available,  I began looking at magazines such as THE (Technological Horizons in Education),  books on the subject,  prices and fees involved by satellite broadcasting facilities,  and all manner of educational interactive technologies.

Once all this research started,  I was fascinated with the new interactive technologies that were just then beginning to emerge,  such as Apple's Hypercard,  which had a "text hyperlink" system which allowed a user ot "Click" some text and immediatley be shifted to related material.   This was also just prior to the release of Windows,  so the idea of the graphical interface had been dominated by the Mac. 

By the time I finished the year and a half graduate MARC program,  I had been exposed to enough computer-related tie-ins to education and theological education in particular,  to see how networking and communication would become a very significant tool for the future of the Church.  All along,  I was introduced to little pieces of relevant information about how online communications made it possible to share information ,  and eventually,  personal information easily and effectively.  I recall Ken taking groups of students to a computer shop to get a primer on what kinds of processing was available for what price,  how much memory costs,  hard drive space,  etc.  

The various pieces of the computer communication world were nearly all intoduced to me by Ken in some way,  either directly in a class on "Computers and the Church",  or in events which Ken uusally had a hand in encouraging me to investigate.  I recall a meeting of some people from across the country involved in some computer network called Ecunet which met at United during my time as a student.  Between that time and a couple of years later,  when CAMCON met at a Dayton Hotel in Late 1992,  I was to become much more deeply involved in researching and thinking about the online world.

© Copyright 2003 Dale Lature. Last update: 9/23/2003; 3:35:02 PM.