HomeNews Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center 10th Year Anniversary
Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center 10th Year Anniversary
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
by
Carl D. Clarke, Jr.
The Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center (HEC) is having its 10th
anniversary celebration on March 31, and I was pleased to be invited.
The HEC hosts on-site and televised classes from numerous Virginia
universities, and I am the guy who, back in 1998, coined its mantra,
“Improving your life by degrees”.
This tenth anniversary started me to thinking how the HEC might evolve
in the next ten years. Ten years from now, people will not actually
attend classes at the HEC. Instead, they will download classes at home
on their computers. And indeed, they will have access to classes from
all over the world. The HEC will make this possible by filling all
that classroom space with banks of switchers and routers and modems and
all manner of techno-toys. Then the following will be possible.
I’ve always wanted to take a class in “Beginning Finnish,” but none of
the HEC’s participating universities offers it. The New HEC would
download it from the University of Helsinki and stream it to my house.
Likewise, I want to learn to conduct the Navaho Blessing Way ceremony,
which brings an ailing body or spirit back into harmony with nature.
But the Blessing Way certification course is only available from the
University of New Mexico. The HEC would get this course for me.
Ten years from now, children will not go to school in school
buildings, which tend to grow mold and fall into disrepair. The
Southwest Virginia Education and Training Network will expand so that
every child will be home-schooled in a “classroom” in the parents’
house. There, sixth grader Billy and his fourth grader sister Mary
will attend class at side-by-side computers. The only people they will
have to throw spitballs at will be each other.
Students at the College for Older Adults will have access to any
class from any College for Older Adults in the world. In the HEC’s
Virtual Reality Room, they’ll be able to float around on the ceiling
while taking a class called “Virtual Space Trip.” People will come from
all over the Southeast to take this course. And pay big bucks for it
too.
All this will be made possible by technology, all those switchers and
routers. All you have to do at home is enter the University number, the
class number, your student number, your password, the class password,
the semester number, and then verify each one twice. But don’t get any
of the numbers wrong. If you do, instead of “Advanced Calculus,” you
may be downloading a class on “Mussels--and How They Mate.”
Happy Anniversary, HEC.
Carl D. Clarke, Jr. from Abingdon is a weekly columnist for the Washington County News. He may be reached at
