Recently I've become aware of new Masters programs at OCAD. They are strongly based in digital media, and have sparked my interest immensely.
However, I was disappointed with OCAD the first time through (this is not solely their fault I will admit). I'm quite wary of their ability to deliver what they promise, and I have what may be a romanticized idea of graduate school. Full of research and deep intellectual conversation. I'd also hoped for that in undergrad and its lead to my rather disdainful view of my first four years of university.
At some point in the future I may apply to one of these new digital media programs but for now I intend on taking a different path. Not long ago I came upon a political science major's website dedicated to how he learned everything his graduate curriculum would have offered, for a fraction of the cost. It was his thinking that in many fields the letters after your name aren't terribly important when set next to your world experience, so he looked carefully at what his program would teach him, and then went and sought it out on his own. Developing his own personal research assignments and travelling around to get more perspective.
This is my general goal, I know that art & design skills are gauged by your portfolio and so I've been looking around at what various design graduate programs offer and intend to self-direct my learning in these areas over the next couple years, while I work and develop my personal body of work in this manner.
So far its mostly been about research, I've got a nice stack of books at home I've begun to grind through to fill in the gaps left by my undergrad's light workload and if any like-minded folks out there are interested in joining me on this I'd be happy to work in a way that can help everyone out. In fact that would be ideal, given that the programs I would be most interested are about social and digital media, an online work group is right on target.
This feels like a good moment to mention Salman Khan again. This is a man with a fantastic idea. Not unlike Wikipedia it is his goal to make education more accessible, and he has begun doing this through youtube. He has posted a massive number of video lessons in all sorts of subjects and his concept for the future of education is this:
Students are given homework which involves watching his (or any) video lessons online, and they are then able to come to class the next day and ask questions and expand on the ideas with their teachers. Doesn't that sound ideal?
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