The magic of paper
In the afternoon the doorbell rang. The postman gave me a sturdy envelope. „Please do not bend“ friendly but warning letters in red say. The postage stamp is by Royal Mail.
I opened the letter and found a „Certificate of Participation“ by the University of Birmingham. They offered a MOOC via Futurelearn titled „Digital Storytelling: Filmmaking for the Web„. I joined it and got a lot of insights from Dr. Michele Aaron, Dr. Richard Langley and all the others.
In this digital world it is still a pleasure to carefully take a certificate out of an envelope, look at the nice, thick, stable paper and read it.
Although you do of course know what it’s all about. Although you already got your digital version of the certificate. Although digital versions are much more secure, shareable, researchable, modern…
Thanks, University of Birmingham and Futurelearn for offering this, for printing the certificate and for putting it in that sturdy envelope. Thanks Mr. Unknown Pilot for flying that plane across the Channel. Thanks, Mr. Nameless Trucker for driving that lorry carefully to southern Germany. Thanks, Mr. Postman for ringing my doorbell and handing out that letter today.