The Online/Analog Dialectic for Education

David Perrell, a terrific blogger and writing coach, has this about excellent teaching in his weekly "Monday Musings" missive out today:

Mediocre teachers focus on delivering information in an efficient manner. Great ones focus on delivering information in an entertaining one.

The best teachers inspire their students with joy and enthusiasm. When I talk about enthusiasm, I'm inspired by its original Greek term: enthousiasmos. It referred to the divine inspiration granted by people who act like they're inhabited by a feeling of God-like ecstasy.

Maybe without knowing or intending to do so, David perfectly captures the promise and the failure of online instruction. Digital is by far the most efficient way to deliver information, especially if one can leverage that delivery over thousands/millions of students, but it struggles to inspire or arouse much enthousiasmos. 

The pedagogical key seems to be finding the optimal way to deliver mass content digitally while using the analog teacher-student interface to inspire. As with so many things, it is both/and, not either/or.