“Imagination is more than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

— Albert Einstein.

As a parent and teacher I have spent a large amount of time trying to encourage students to gain knowledge and use it imaginatively for the betterment of their world.

Now as we struggle to survive the pandemic and improve our relationships with other people on earth and protect the climate of our shared planet, we need imagination more than ever.

One good thing that is a result of the COVID-19 crisis is the recognition of our need for greater access to computer devices and internet services.

Many businesses and most schools depended on virtual learning during the darkest days of the pandemic.

Randolph County was slow getting computers, but now “Chromebooks” are here for students to use, and broadband service is being expanded as rapidly as possible.

Snow days should not be a problem now that students can work from home and not lose a school day.

This new technology can help students keep in touch with teachers and other students, and it offers wonderful new opportunities for imaginative self-expression.

Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic are still essential skills, but students can reach so much more information and do amazing things with what they learn.

Cyber-savvy teachers can assign tasks that use computer skills as well as the traditional basic skills.

If students want to learn more about a topic, they can do research online and produce a traditional term paper, or a web quests full of pictures and podcasts with voice-over passages as well as written text.

They might do a PowerPoint presentation with charts, diagrams, photographs as well as text.

A particularly imaginative podcast called “Home Away from Home” was created by our grandson Gordon Grambow for his sixth grade teacher in Durham, North Carolina.

You may be thinking it was about wonderful visits to West Virginia, but not for this imaginative young traveler.

He was suggesting that humans may live on other planets someday. “Home” is not a sentimental word in this context, but it does make one love earth’s comfortable atmosphere and temperature.

Gordon is a young person who loves the plants and animals on this earth, but he is also able to imagine what it might be like if we had to leave here and find a habitable planet in the Trappist System.

He wrote his own text and read it on the podcast in a good science commentator’s voice. He made me think about what we know and what we really do not know yet. Nevertheless, we can imagine and learn how to build a better future.

To listen to the podcast, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96VqYo1ZDCk.