“Where do you stay?”: Making sense of a new sense of place

A red silk shirt with blousey sleeves.  A black ascot.  And a black beret.  It was an outfit tailored to make a skinny white kid with stringy hair look like a goober.  In seventh grade, I was one of the first students bussed across town to help integrate the Rockdale County school system. Although I wouldn’t have said it then, being in the minority was a powerful learning experience.  But poor Mr. Hudson, a former professional jazz musician, was relegated to special circle of hell where he had to teach ungainly white kids like me how to march the way his all black bands had.  When I tripped doing the slide step slide move, Mr. Hudson got in my face.
“Do you even know anyone with soul?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“T-Bone, come over here and help this white boy get some soul.  Stay with him until it sinks in.”
Just like that, T-Bone, the saxophone player and I were joined at the hip.  T-Bone ooozed soul.  Walking down the hall you could tell he had soul down.  I mean, he was a chronic offender of the “no sunglasses in class” rules — never complained about doing his mandatory detention time.  He wasn’t too happy about being saddled with a clueless white appendage — but you didn’t cross Mr. Hudson.
T-Bone didn’t talk much but at lunch that day he asked me, “Where do you stay?”  I didn’t get it.
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t understand English?  Where do you do the things you need to do?”
“Oh, where do I live?”
“I assume you live everywhere you go.  What I am asking is where do you stay?”
Throughout my junior high school education, I learned the subtleties of cultural differences.  T-Bone helped me appreciate the nuances of place.  In the time that he was my soul mentor, T-Bone stayed many different places with different friends or family as his situation shifted — I never moved.

Last week, I thought of T-Bone again when I met Tim Beynart.  Tim is a Senior Experience Architect for NBC Universal.  Hey, NBC Universal is a big deal.  More than just the peacock, it is a host of over 30 different networks including The Golf Channel, SyFy, A&E, Hulu, and Style.  OK, it is a big dang deal.  Through a virtual introduction, I learned that Tim headed up a group that built and manages the video player used on all NBC Universal sites.  I definitely wanted to talk to him — and find a way to get him to talk to NMI students.  So I suggested a phone call.  Tim recommended coffee instead — in downtown Athens.  Come to find out that Tim works for a huge New York firm with headquarters in 30 Rock, but he lives in Athens.  Through conference calls, shared screen technology, and email, he manages a team of 10 all over the world.  I asked him why he lives in Athens.  Two reasons — both of them boys.  “I didn’t want to raise kids in New York.” With technology Tim says he can do everything his job requires while living in Athens and only visiting the Big Apple four times a year.

I used to reject what we once called “distance learning.”  I had seen too many horrendous examples of technology that technically worked, but really didn’t help people learn.  Disembodied videoconference heads droning lectures that were the perfect cure for insomnia, not effective learning. Chaotic chats where jumbles of answers and questions tumble together out in nonsensible narrative.  Plus I found the ubiquitous claim that we could all take AND teach class in our pajamas ludicrous.  How dare they make assumptions about my sleeping apparel?

But Tim and T-Bone have me thinking. I am behind the times.  The term “Distance Learning” and the old approaches have mutated.  It was always more about managing time rather than spanning distance, anyway.  New models have emerged recently which suggest there are productive ways to integrate technology and physical presence.  Hybrid learning joins group learners in real time and facilitates interaction when participants are free.  Low residency programs bring learners to campus for extended stretches at critical points in the semester, but provides technologized resources to help them learn on their own when they are back home.  UGA is looking at these new ways of teaching.  These new approaches offer the potential to reach larger audiences with affordable alternatives to traditional in-classroom learning.  But we are approaching these with a critical eye.  Before UGA implements any new systems, we have to be sure that we are not sacrificing the supreme goal of effective learning.

Tim showed me that we can use our technology to accomplish important tasks across space and time zones.  But T-Bone had a valuable lesson to offer as well.  Computers are now where we “do what we need to do.”  Maybe computers are where we need to teach as well.

PS.  I still look like a goober in the red shirt, but I am smoking in my beret.

Scott Shamp is the Director of the New Media Institute in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia. The New Media Institute is an interdisciplinary unit created to explore the creative, critical, and commercial implications of new digital communication technology. Shamp currently serves on the Board of the International Digital Media and Arts Association. He has been a member of iDMAa since its founding in 2003.