West Portal Reflections #10 part 2, October 12, 1997
West Portal Director of the MSU Communication Technology Laboratory
West Portal Reflections document my experiences as I try to open a portal to Northern California for Michigan State University. They are targeted to my teams in the Comm Tech Lab and Virtual University, to my close colleagues and bosses throughout Michigan State University, and to close friends and family. These pages serve as ethnographic documentation of my participant-observation research on TeleRelating ("using technology to sustain and enhance close personal relationships"). The contents mix professional and personal life because I am reaching out 2500 miles to people I care about and work with. I hope my reflections help you to keep me in your hearts and make San Francisco a place that is yours. Thanks for journeying with me as I think, learn and experiment.
October 25 at the Earth to Avatar Conference in San Francisco I will present on a panel about Healing and Cyberspace based on the following abstract:
Telerelating in Cyberspace: Research and Practice
by Carrie Heeter
Michigan State University Comm Tech Lab
Cyberspace can emerge as a medium for sustaining social relationships: kin-keeping, caring, friendship, and support. Already we see online mourning of the dead, online family photo albums, photochat sessions, and webtalk study groups. Heeter lives in San Francisco, runs the Michigan State University Communication Technology Laboratory remotely and directs a team of 20 others in East Lansing developing Virtual University courses. Her talk will focus on: examples of telereleating today; gender differences in telerelating; Heeter's experiments as a virtual boss, teacher and friend; and a wish list of new personal appliances and software for maintaining and enhancing close personal relationships.
Fall launched full scale use of the American Identity Explorer CD-ROM in IAH 201. Introducing technology on a large scale holds different challenges than did developing the software. Sadly, problems with using the CD in public computer labs resulted in widespread frustration with the software. Fifty sections of IAH 201 used the CD for 3 weeks.
PC Labs worked fine, but Mac Labs with 16MB of RAM experienced low memory errors. A five step procedure for starting up Macs to maximize available RAM (used in previous semesters but lost somehow this semester) was re-introduced following negative press coverage. Too late to prevent the problems, the fix did solve them for the final week. Next semester should yield better results.
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The West Portal Art Festival closed off streets but let muni streetcars and busses traverse tracks in the middle of the exhibits. In its first official year, the fair was not well attended compared to the other 27 festivals in the Bay Area that weekend. Still, it was close to home and the West African fried plaintains were so good we had them for lunch and dinner both days. |
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Kool Stuff Inside seemed like a cute way to take part in a street fair without having to work hard at it. Actually the store is called Kool Stuff. |
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25 bikes are allowed on most ferries. I have been wimping out lately as Sheldon bikes to Sausalito and Tiburon, and I meet him on the ferry and share a boat ride back to San Francisco. Boat rides in the Bay breathe salty fresh air and view awesome bridges, mountains and city vistas. |
