Conventional wisdom views language as a device through which thought is actualized into spoken or written word, as a tool that simply assists in the representation of something that precedes it. To paraphrase a science mentor and dear friend of mine, “We do not create the world through language. Language and explicit knowledge are the poor symbolic systems we use to try and communicate about the real creator of the world: implicit rules and knowledge that are metasymbolic.”

For those of us who rely on Outlook to manage our activities, trying to schedule a meeting with those who do not use the Outlook Calendar can be a pain. For me, that pain usually comes when I work with a faculty group, because many of our faculty do not have their schedules on Outlook.

That is why finding a tool called “Doodle” was like finding a painkiller for meeting schedulers like me.

As I was reflecting on what we as a department do and how technology fits into that equation, I realized that so much of how we think about technology has to do with how the instructor uses the technology to push/impart information to the student. While this is a valid use, I fear that what we are creating is really just a high-tech version of a correspondence course. Is there really that much difference between a lecture delivered via a video tape and one that is streamed over the Internet? Sure there is the “cool” factor—we can make the Internet version portable so the student can view it on their iPod—but are we really offering the student anything new? I would argue that these technologies should also be used by students to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts. I would further argue that when both faculty and students are using these technologies to communicate knowledge to each other, we will have created a paradigm shift in online learning.