An Intimidating Audience
Saturday, I gave a short talk at the National Art Education Association conference. I wanted to explore some of the implications of Pam Taylor's research in using Tinderbox and Storyspace in the art classroom. In particular, we've got fairly good methods for deciding whether a feature makes software a few percent better or worse, but no good method for knowing whether the software sometimes makes a huge, life-changing difference to its users.
The scary part? Putting together the visuals, knowing that they're going to be shown to a room full of art professionals -- professionals on holiday who (I imagine) must see plenty of earnest, clumsy student stuff every day. I dialed the visuals way back; better to be clumsy and simple.
But M. L. Deruaz has some nice things to say about the talk.
Best parts of trip? hearing Mark Bernstein present about using Tinderbox (He created the software). He's bright, entertaining and possibly the only person I have ever seen who knows how to create interesting powerpoint visuals to accompany a talk.