On Thu, 21 Sep 1995 meetings@global.california.com wrote:
> If people are using a computer
> projector, and the setting is sufficiently informal or learning oriented,
> every software product becomes a presentation tool: outliner,
> wordprocessor, spreadsheeter. You can do tricks with them all that will
> make them as hypertextual as you need. And, given the informality of it
> all, not only can you present, but you can make the presentation
> collaborative. If people have things to add, you can add them, right on
> the magic screen, without having to defend anything to anybody. If there
> are questions, you can mark them for later review. If you do it well, you
> can shift the entire "gestalt" from you being in the foreground as the
> presenter, to the entire community being in the foreground as knowledge
> builders.
>
> The power of the electronic outline (projected) as an agenda maker is that
> it helps make the shift.
>
> This is the kind of stuff I've been working on for more then 10 years now.
> I know that there are a lot of asssumptions I haven't spelled out. And
> will be happy to spell as needed.
This is a perfect example of how one single new piece of technology can
generate a cultural shift -- not a big one, maybe, compared to some others
that have gotten discussed in this group, but a perfectly definite and
observable one. And all that is needed is someone -- yourself, in this
example -- to put the piece to good use.
Maybe there's another lesson too. For example about how different an
outliner is when it's being used to construct static hardcopy for an
agenda, from what it is when it's being used on-the-fly, dynamically,
projected in front of the whole group. These two situations -- usages --
are radically different from each other. But it's the same piece of
software.
--
Regards
Jim Michmerhuizen jamzen@world.std.com
web residence at http://world.std.com/~jamzen/
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. . . . . . . . . . Actions speak louder than words . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . but not as clearly . . . . . . . . . .