Project Bamboo, third day, first session
Greg Jackson, University of Chicago IT.
Free-associating reminds us that things we think of as new really aren’t. 25 years and four jobs ago, head of Educational Technology Center, working out how to use computers in schools. Controversial but interesting project. Why did/didn’t it work?
Project Athena: same questions as ETC, but different technology and more resources. Now? Opportunity to reflect on these questions again. Many policy questions revolve around copyright, which are threatening serious effects on scholars’ use of raw materials.
Under what circumstances should we think about things as following stage progressions? (To get to one stage, you go through previous one; you don’t regress.) If you organize process around this, it’s all about moving people forward on a determined path. Thinking about technology in scholarly work tends to presume a stage progression. Presumption is that until you do the simple stuff, you can’t think about the advanced stuff.
Different way to think about it: we are always facing choices. The choice set varies, but you have an everpresent array, and there isn’t just one path through.
An interesting thing about Bamboo is that it’s caught on like wildfire, and it’s really engaging people. Why? Because it’s interesting from a transactional-analysis point of view. Often, we get an “I’m okay—you’re not okay” viewpoint, where the technologists are automatically okay and anyone who’s not paying attention to technology isn’t. These interactions produce pathological results.
But is it just the techies doing this? A professor at UC complained that students weren’t paying attention in class because of open laptops; requested wireless turned off. Response: it won’t work, because there are other connection modalities. Response: this is not a technical problem, it’s a classroom-management problem, so cope! This is another “I’m okay—you’re not okay” transaction! I want what I want, I don’t care what you think, and if you don’t agree, you’re full of it.
Not okay/not okay transactions: Tech exists that works, but isn’t even slightly creative and doesn’t change the educational process. E.g. basic course-management system. Increases efficiency, but it doesn’t change a damn thing; both sides are thinking “I don’t really know how to do this, but I have to do something.”
Bamboo is different; all sides are trying to understand each other. Sometimes it feels like we’re talking with idiots, but no, we’re talking with smart people saying idiotic things; we have to pick through that and get into the other side’s head (why don’t they think it’s idiotic?).
Goal: getting to “I’m okay—you’re okay.” Releasing the potential we all suspect is there, in this interaction of tech and the humanities.