The CAMROSE BOOSTER April 30, 2013
For the birds
Letters to the Editor Letters are welcomed but please limit them to 500 words or less and sign with first name, initial, surname, address and phone number; only name of writer and city or town will be printed. Letters to third parties are not accepted. The Camrose Booster may edit for length, clarity, legality, personal abuse, good taste, public interest and availability of space. The Camrose Booster thanks you for your interest in the letters page and encourages your comments. Hacking insurance?
There are many reasons to be grateful for the conveniences of the Internet, including the way I intend to send this letter. However, one realizes that this may be overdone. On the one hand, one is bomStan Trautman (left), Walter Busenius, and Barry Arnett.
Stan Trautman and Walter Busenius placed nesting material atop 10-foot platforms on the land formerly owned by Walter. The present owner, Barry Arnett, ably drove his tractor and loader through several feet of snow.
The platforms were erected by Walter several years ago. There were eggs in two of the nests. This is a great project by Walter, who, along with Stan, is a member of Ducks Unlimited and the Camrose Fish and Game Association.
PEN .I am a more empathic person POINTS by Berdie Fowler
Thanks to a thoughtful lady It is common for any of us to get messages on our telephones from people we do not know. They are often from telemarketers and we tend to regard them as irritating nuisance calls. I checked my telephone messages recently and got one that made me feel like I had a brand new friend. It made me feel good and I really did appreciate the call – much more than the caller realized, I am sure. I had earlier called my dentist. His receptionist had been away from her phone at the time so I had left a message to say that, because of illness, I would be unable to keep my appointment on that day. The person who had left the message on my phone had called to tell me that she had received the message intended for my dentist. Not only that but she, a person unknown to me, in a vibrant cheery voice, went on to say that her phone number was very similar to that of my dentist then added her hope that I would soon be feeling better. The kindness of her act was indeed appreciated by me. My dental appointment had been made with my convenience having been considered as far as was possible. What an ingrate I would have appeared to be if my dentist had never got my message of cancellation. I shudder to think of the possibility of never having known that my first call had never been received at his office. Thank you, new friend, for making a call from which you had nothing to gain and I had much. The world is a kinder, gentler place because of you. Your call did, indeed, brighten my day and save me from appearing to be inconsiderate of my dentist's time.. Not everyone does thoughtful things without promise of personal reward. Some time ago I sent money by mail in the form of a bank draft. It so happened that the recipient had not notified me of a change of address so she did not get the letter. When we discovered why, she went to her previous address to inquire if the letter might be there. The present residents told her they threw away any mail that was not addressed to them. They never bothered to return to sender or drop it back into the mail with the note: not at this address. By contrast, the kind people who currently live at my previous address have forwarded the few pieces of mail that still turn up occasionally. They could simply pitch it, too, but don’t. We are blessed to have people in the world who think beyond themselves in consideration of benefits for others.
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barded by suggestions to get on the Internet for banking, for utility payments, for ingoing and outgoing transactions, and for paying taxes. On the other hand, about every week – sometimes every second day – one hears about more sophisticated ways that accounts and communications are being hacked into – internationally. Some of these have been able to access deleted messages. There have also been warnings, in police columns, and from some telephone companies, about how to avoid new frauds; how to clean a computer being discarded; what care to be taken with credit card purchases, etc. I have known some who have had identities stolen, via credit cards or online. Usually
it has taken weeks for them to clear everything that has been lost or compromised – and sometimes not everything has been recovered. Credit card companies apparently are very helpful. Otherwise? Is there, or will there be, antihacking insurance? There is a bit of irony in being urged to go online for everything. It reduces the cost to the sender, but increases the cost and risk to the receiving party. It is he or she who pays for computer ink, paper, replacement, and the task of checking for accuracy. In a way, this goes back to the days before prepaid postage stamps – centuries ago now – when the receiver of a letter, etc., had to pay for the cost of transmission. Vincent E. Eriksson Camrose
Whither Augustana? With a school year wrapping up and having just delivered my annual Report to the Community, I’ve naturally been thinking about what comes next at Augustana. I know this is a question that interests many in our community as well. Many local citizens have asked me about the budgetary challenges facing postsecondary education. It’s premature to predict the outcome, but I confess that I am troubled. Having come to Alberta from the United States, I have seen first-hand the disasters that ensue when government begins to disinvest in public higher education, when universities come to be seen as serving the narrow purpose of workforce development and economic growth, when the arts and humanities are viewed as being of lesser value than so-called practical programs, when bureaucrats begin to sacrifice academic diversity and access to postsecondary education on the altar of efficiency. This is the world I left behind in my former home, Maine. And it is the situation across much of the U.S., in states from Maine south to Florida and west to California. I hope they provide an object lesson to help guide our discourse here in Alberta in very different directions. In the meantime, I have been focussing much of my attention on other trends in postsecondary education that I believe force us to ask what it will take for our institutions to remain relevant and essential. For example, with everything that is happening in the world of technology, with developments such as MOOCs (massive open online courses) and free on-line educational materials such as those provided by Khan Academy (http: //www.khanacademy. org), why will students in the future – perhaps as soon as 2020 – even need to come or want to come to a brick and mortar campus? Augustana,
Second Thought
Allen Berger, Dean, Augustana Campus, University of Alberta
just like other university campuses, will need to have a compelling answer to this question. Fortunately, I believe it is human-scale, residential campuses like Augustana that are best positioned to provide a persuasive response. Our advantage is that we already offer what the internet cannot and will likely never be good at providing – one-onone relationships with caring faculty mentors; learning through in-depth discussion and problem-solving with peers; rich opportunities to apply and test learning in community settings or through guided undergraduate research; well-designed and diverse programs to help young people navigate a pathway to responsible adulthood and citizenship; etc. But Augustana will still need to adapt and change. As I think about the conversations we need to have about our future, two general themes come to mind. The first is value-added. In a world where students will be able to access content through highly effective lectures, mini-presentations, simulations, and games online, what value will
professors add in face-to-face classes? For the most part I do not believe faculty will be needed to deliver content. Hence the 50-minute lecture will become a thing of the past. Instead, I believe professors will (many at Augustana already do) rely on pedagogical approaches that emphasize the evaluation and discussion of content, the application of material to new contexts (especially place-based local contexts), the development of higher-order thinking and writing skills, group problemsolving, and the development and exploration of interdisciplinary connections. The second topic we will need to focus on is something I call the course fetish, in other words our tendency in post-secondary education to treat the free-standing course as an organizational unit that receives unquestioning acceptance, respect, even reverence. Why does learning, why does the student experience, I increasingly wonder, need to be organized into relatively disconnected 14-week experiences, each involving two or three relatively short meetings per week, each valued at three credits, and each taught by a lone professor? In the future, there will be courses galore on the internet. Students will be able to collect certificates of completion like Easter eggs in a basket or like Boy Scout merit badges. So, I wonder, how will teaching and learning be different on a residential campus? Part of the answer, I believe, is that what we will offer will be a far more integrated experience. Our challenge now is to figure out what new structures and patterns of organization will allow us to deliver such an experience with maximum effectiveness. I don’t have all the answers. But I do believe Augustana has a community of talented teachers and scholars who are ready to have the needed conversations.