Blog 4/17

In regards to online education in general to Public or Private School education, I think this would make an excellent alternative for situations where parents want to home school. This would allow parents to be a part of an active pre-planned lesson plan that keeps their child at a reasonable education level with other students their age. Also, this makes a great alternative to Counselors and Alternative School teachers that work with students that have suffered pregnancy, legal or general life issues that have kept them out of the traditional classroom setting.

In regards to the Second Life application, at first glance I thought "Oh wow. So the Universities have finally figured out that Online simulated environments exist and on top of that they chose a poor graphics engine to play with." I know, sarcasm. In all honesty I didn't see what was so great or different from what I am familiar with and use all the time in my personal life just to keep in touch with friends and family and in some cases even use to discuss business through a game. It's true... play and work. But when I saw how other applications such as PowerPoint and Movie programs etc. could be imported into the environment was when I realized just how cool this particular program was. It got me thinking that this might be the program that sets the future experience in distance business, education and military communication. Imagine a General able to enter an online environment and see his troops in action and able to communicate with them in real time as they move, as though it were a computer game. Why not have business salesmen make presentations through this environment without the expense of air travel and time delay? It would be neat if eventually people entered the environment able to look like real humans or themselves... not some cartoonish character. An entire new medium of telephone conferencing for instance.

In the meantime though, it is common practice for Directors to visit each others neighboring schools and clinic each others bands to provide a well rounded opinion or view of the students progress. It would be cool to be able to see the other class in rehearsal from Rockwall or Wylie live for my students to view how they conduct themselves and practice. Also, I am already in the process of using the online world to communicate and study with other directors for professional development reasons. Me and 2 others are also reviewing each others marching programs for next year and offering advice through emails and application file transfers so that we do not have to travel miles and miles just to look at each others computer screens.