Post by Eadye Simpson on Jan 20, 2014 17:02:56 GMT
My name is Eadye Simpson. I was born in Texas on a Memorial Day Weekend when school is out for the summer. The story that happened within our own family was a cruel twist of fate. I lost my own son to a tragic death in Newburgh. He was 26 years old at the time and had a very promising career in the field of media out in Hollywood. While I remained in Evansville serving as Director of a local school, Taylor worked for the largest media firm in the world as a Script Doctor. He was home visiting for the holidays and continued to work during his downtime. At the time he was working on a play that was to be produced in England. He would write on one computer, and then download and flash drive the information over the internet onto another computer. When he got back to Hollywood after the first of the year, he found that one of the gossip columnists had compromised his work and posted information about the play on his website. It destroyed not only his work, but he felt that it compromised the work of the individuals that he was working with. Having a piece of work compromised over the internet is like cutting a huge hole in a favorite designer dress. The first time this happened to him was when he was attending the University of Chicago. He called me and told me what he thought happened. As his mother and director of a school, I thought, “Well, what can I do?” I was really too busy to think about it, as most educators are.
My concern is the health of our educational websites that have grown over the years to be the main source of “school” at whatever grade level and whether you are being homeschooled or are in an educational facility. How do we make sure that an individual can write in privacy? How can we teach knowing that we may or may not be able to protect another’s work? As my son wrote in his last journal entry, “Would we have A Farewell to Arms if fiber optics had been created?”
The day of my son’s funeral instead of attending I incorporated a business that he and I were interested in pursuing in the future. He wanted to give artists the tools to create. As an educator knowing what happened, I wanted to protect other artists. It is my project in this class to see if that is even a remote possibility. This pursuit will be an investigation into the beauty of words that a writer carries internally that will die and wither if not protected from similar technological elements. Taylor and I loved the freedom to explore the wilderness as much as we loved to write. Will the next generation be able to continue to enjoy both or will we lose the voice of the artist that helps to change the world?
My concern is the health of our educational websites that have grown over the years to be the main source of “school” at whatever grade level and whether you are being homeschooled or are in an educational facility. How do we make sure that an individual can write in privacy? How can we teach knowing that we may or may not be able to protect another’s work? As my son wrote in his last journal entry, “Would we have A Farewell to Arms if fiber optics had been created?”
The day of my son’s funeral instead of attending I incorporated a business that he and I were interested in pursuing in the future. He wanted to give artists the tools to create. As an educator knowing what happened, I wanted to protect other artists. It is my project in this class to see if that is even a remote possibility. This pursuit will be an investigation into the beauty of words that a writer carries internally that will die and wither if not protected from similar technological elements. Taylor and I loved the freedom to explore the wilderness as much as we loved to write. Will the next generation be able to continue to enjoy both or will we lose the voice of the artist that helps to change the world?