Susan,

I am so completely with you on your reflections. There are issues that are limiting by their very nature. As a visual artist I have spent years teaching students to “look through their tool”, to see the work clearly, to be so comfortable with your tool that it becomes transparent, and then your image will truly be successful.

This is easier when the tool is a pencil or a brush, it gets a little harder when it’s a computer with system and application software. (Easy is a relative term, I’m good with a pencil, horrible with watercolor, great with Photoshop.)

The point is to be so comfortable with the tool that creative energy is not diverted from the true purpose… making an image!

I’m a little disappointed that when I see something I can’t just click in my head and the image is saved. No, I have to find my camera, load the film, set the dials, develop the film, and finally make the print. Oh yeah, and then there are all those decisions I have to make on lens, shutter, aperature, etc.

There is a lot of crap that suddenly comes between my vision and the final print. So, now we have digital and even more crap, the final image seems to be pushed further and further away.

This is all true. What is also true is that it is different. A digital image is immediately available for correction or editing. Digital cameras are in everyone’s hands. Images present themselves everyday, and everyone now has a camera. Running out of film is no longer an excuse (mostly). There are dozens of significant differences.

So on-line teaching may be the same thing. It doesn’t give the same face-to-face experience. We don’t see the “aha” moment that makes it all worthwhile. My (your) passion may not come through as easily, and spontaneous teachable moments harder to capitalize.

It may take a few semesters to fully understand the benefits. Access to more students? Consistent education that can be fine tuned? Flexibility for student and faculty? A longer teaching life? Better and more current resources?

Is everything new better? No, but everything new and tested should be!

I think it takes an educator to embrace the change, with the understanding of what is lost. And then assess the importance of that which is lost.

I am hopeful!

(Ha! And then be clever enough to do all this writing in Notes, because Canvas is crashing every two minutes.)

(Written in 2015)