| ABSTRACT |
| Electronic Pavillon, the Global Village University. |
| Something to think about: Why is the present is always a footnote to the past? |
| Early in the 19th century Thomas Jefferson submitted a report to the Virginia legislature. Mr. Jefferson, born in April 1743, was approaching his seventy-sixth birthday. The cause he gave himself in his old age was public education. A commission was formed, appointed by the governor of the state, with Jefferson as chairman. The commission's task was to come up with a plan for the University of Virginia. The commission met for four days beginning August 1, 1818 at Rockfish Gap an the Blue Ridge. The profound effect of that brief meeting still resonates throughout the American educational community, and remains relevant today, unchallenged by modern standards of contemporary behavior, i.e., as follows: (1) a site was selected, (2) the physical environment, was prescribed (3) the branches of learning defined, and (4) the commission formalized the number and description of professorships required. The University of Virginia was chartered in 1819. |
| The commission also made recommendations concerning the curriculum. The list was concise inclusive to the extent of emphasis on reasoning, enlarging the mind, cultivation of morals, as well as instilling the precepts of virtue and order: To enlighten them with mathematical and physical sciences, which advance the arts, and administer to the health, the subsistence and comforts of human life, and generally, to form them to the habits of virtue to others and the happiness within themselves. |
| As to the physical environment it was proposed that a series of buildings be constructed called Pavilions for the housing of faculty with living quarters above and lecturing room below, united by a range of dormitories so connected: ... that a passage of some kind, undercover from the weather, should give a communication along the whole range. |
| The last recommendation, strikes me as imaginative as well as prophetic, and certainly the most Jeffersonian in character. Jefferson's proposed pavilion anticipates a learning environment directly parallel to the telematic information world we now live in. The author's immediate response was to extend the idea of connecting what Jefferson called an "academical village" in 1818 to the proposition of an electronic university in 1994. The Jefferson model assumes extensions: "...the admission of enlargement to any degree to which the institution may extend in future times." |
| An electronic learning environment assumes occupancy, energy flow, a state of awareness where the image of ideas presume visibility. Interacting network villages? Of course! A global village, connected, parallel, free from hierarchic constraints, democratic, caring, loving, and trusting? |
| Jefferson's pavilion of connected passageways providing communication along the whole range translates as a system of vital crossings in a network of telematic pathways providing for the interactive free exchange of information; a continuous interaction of ideas, art, music, literature, studies relating to the human spirit. The Pavilion concept of 1994, Jefferson's plan of 176 years ago, reborn in the new global environment is transformed into becoming a cultural fix, a positioning, a socio-navigational landfall for the formation of a global network of pavilions, communities in parallel, an extended educational treasure trove of widely dispersed data-based information sites complete with mentors all serving as an alternative to the specific centralized physical campus of yesterday. |
| B. January 14, 1994 |
| A WORKING PAPER |
| - The interconnected pavilion is an idea based directly upon the 19th century Jeffersonian model for a "university" education as contained in the proposal, dated August 4, 1818. The report by the state commissioners was written by Thomas Jefferson who chaired the meeting which lead to the original architectural design plan in the founding of the University of Virginia located in Charlottesville. (refer to "report" page) |
| - A pavilion is an idea whose time has come full circle. lt is especially timely, as well as relevant, when you prefix pavilion with the word "electronic". |
| - An electronic pavilion may exist within any given telematic environment. Each pavilion is characterized as a dispersed workstation(s) created especially for the purpose of establishing a meeting place of the mind - a chautauqua within an electronic network. |
| - Pavilion architecture serves as a metaphor for the nomenclature of each telematic HOST linked by a pathway connecting the cultural concerns of widely dispersed global communities. |
-Chautauqua is defined as cause and effect; an event or series of events in the interacting flux containing images, sounds, and text; intermedia flowing into and out of each pavilion community. |
- An electronic pavilion is defined as a local construct created by the ebb and flow of information between persons who, in their interest for acquiring knowledge - transformation (enlightenment), and resolve, gather together to pool their intellect and their creative imagination in collaboration: individuals traveling an interactive - pavilion pathway; pursuing a telematic vision quest; a journey in time as a consequence of interactivity resulting from connecting mind / imagination / mind. |
| B. January 2, 1992 |
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