The gift of “not knowing”

/ 10 October 2010

When I’m working with theological faculties around teaching with digital tools, one of my primary points is that part of why I’m doing this is because it gives faculty permission to admit that they don’t know what they’re doing in teaching. No one is supposed to know how to teach with technology, not yet, not when it keeps changing around us all the time. But that “not knowing” is one of the best gifts we could be given! Stephen Ramsey is a scholar who works on digital humanities projects, and I was delighted to note that he has said something similar:

We like to marvel at the technological wonders that proceed from things like servers, but in this case — I would say, in all cases — the miracle of “computers in the humanities” is the way it forced even a highly balkanized academy into new kinds of social formations. Anyone involved with any of these big centers will tell you that they are rare sites of genuine collaboration and intellectual synergy — that they explode disciplinary boundaries and even the cherished hierarchies of academic rank. They do this, because . . . well, really because no one really knows what they’re doing.
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