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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, May 3, 2004 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

Jason Ohler

"Seeing Technology's Impacts Beforehand"

ABSTRACT -- Imagine a federal agency that screened new technology the way the FDA screens food and drugs, but with an added mission: to assess an invention's impacts not just on health and safety, but on society and culture as well. What questions would this agency ask about new technology? Assessing technology's impact ahead of time requires seeing technology as something with behaviors, biases, eccentricities and personalities. This is the topic of Ohler's book Taming the Beast - Choice and Control in the Electronic Jungle. Dr. Ohler will address the questions we can ask about technology to help us determine its potential to change society. His presentation will also include his work helping teachers and children develop an awareness of technological impact.

SPEAKER -- In 1986, Dr. Ohler created the Educational Technology Program at the University of Alaska, one of the first teacher education programs in the United States that was created in response to the personal computer revolution in the classroom. He directed this program until 2003, at which time he was appointed President's Professor of Educational Technology and Distance Learning at the University of Alaska, overseeing projects involving e-learning and distributed education. He has been a distance educator for two decades, and served more than 1000 students online before the internet was publicly available. His research has focused on the development of online communities and the organizational assessment of distance education. He is author of three books, numerous articles, and TechWit, a feature column for Apple Computer and the Juneau Empire.




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