(Professor Charles Severance of the Unvisersity of Michigan, aka Doc Chuck, takes a video of himself to post on the Coursera homepage of his history of the internet course. Photo Socotra.)

I think I told you I am taking that Coursera internet class on the history of the world wide web. That is symmetry, for you. Coursera claims it offers “Higher education that overcomes the boundaries of geography, time and money!”

Well, the course is free, and sometimes you get more than what you pay for
Our Rock Star Professor, Dr. Chuck, was here in town to hold an “office hour,” just like we were students on a real campus with a real professor.

Actually, that is bass-ackwards. He was here to use the summer break from the regular academic year at the University of Michigan to do commercial consulting. He was billing a few hours this week to Blackboard, a distance IT learning concern that has a mission statement that promises to  “…help you transform the educational experience within every step of the student lifecycle. Get the technology and expertise you need to meet your institution’s goals.”

That is sort of why I am taking the course in what passes for my spare time. Dr. Chuck set up shop in the basement of Teaism, a coffee house near Archives in the District. I decided to go and hear in person Dr. Chuck’s views on this amazing transformative technology. I dipped my toe in the process while still confined to bed, and in parallel with the recovery and the getting-back-to-work thing.

I am not 100% on walking yet. Going to Office Hour with Dr. Chuck would have been simple enough by Metro, though I hate public transportation, and basically gave up on it after the Madrid train bombings a while back. The “free” opportunity to access the Rock Star Professor wound up costing $40 in cab fares, but it was better than circling endlessly looking for a daytime parking place for the Panzerwagen.

There was no story yesterday, since I spent the discretionary morning time at the Mercedes dealer having them purge the stern Germanic admonition from the dashboard insisting that I have the vehicle serviced at 20,000 miles (it had been, according to the dealer) and why my iPod did not play through the vehicle’s surround sound system.

You will be gratified to know that I left the service lane blasting “I Feel Free” from an old play list on my personal music device.

When I alit from the cab and wobbled toward the coffee house, I realized I am not close to being fully ambulatory, and the trip down the stairs to the dark dungeon of the basement overflow area was a challenge. Doc Chuck was holding court in the corner with about a dozen acolytes, of which I quickly became one.

Dr. Chuck is youthful despite his thinning gray hair. I listened to him and his enthusiasm and found it infectious. My classmates, suddenly non-virtual- were an interesting assortment of aluminum-foil helmet folk and practicing engineers.

It was quite intoxicating, the next hour, as he discussed a course that had as many as 40,000 enrolled at the front end, and in Week Six still had 6,000 of us completing the on-line course work. He is a sly dog, the Doc is. He sucked us in with the people who created this amazing digital communications/shopping/sharing/porn-and-music sharing medium, and then actually got into some basic engineering to actually help us understand what we have gotten into.

I don’t know what to think about this experiment, except to note that it is about like everything in this wired world; real and unreal, connected and somehow isolated.

I am going to do the extra-credit essay this weekend, and get ready for Week Seven and the 30-point final exam. Then, Dr. Chuck will try to figure out what worked, and how this astonishing bit of interactive technology can be improved.

It is sort of neat to be in on the ground floor of this. I thanked Dr. Chuck for the opportunity to see the future, and limped up the stairs to find a cab and leave the reality of the in-person office hours to return to my real office and my real life, though it is far more digital than I could ever have imagined.

Anyway, time for the course this long weekend, and I will do my best to prepare for the big final. Or not. So long as the pool is open, it is compelling to get down there and stroke away for an hour- it is making the leg stronger, day by day, and it is going to be a real jolt when then gate is closed next Monday night, and the season, broken only by those last four melancholy weekend days.

Traditionally, I am the first in the pool and last out for the season, but obviously, the opener was spoiled by the surgery, but I may put a “period” on the season and be the last one just for fun.

I counted: I hold the undisputed record of a decade, first and last, and that may be good enough.

With the internet course, and the University of Coursera. I am certainly one of the first ones in the pool, but I will definitely not be around to be the last one in.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com