Steven Bell notes an article in the NY Times, The Professor as an Open Book. This article highlights one of the issues I have struggled with the most as an instructor at a small college that caters to traditional age students. My facebook profile, for example is not invisible but you have to be specifically searching for it to find it. Of course, since my students are facebook-addicted, it was inevitable that it was eventually found, but I told all my students that my policy was that I would not “friend” them until they graduate. I see them in a classroom several times a week, so it’s not like we need to develop rapport. It’s not an issue of being hip or accessible–there are just not enough levels of access in facebook. Someone is your “friend” or they are not, and although I don’t do anything of interest in facebook, I am actually linked to people I know. I know, I know, that’s SO old school. Even worse, many of my “friends” in facebook are family. Those are the people I have to worry about putting up suspect content that will reflect poorly on me, a la Doctorow’s analysis.

Actually facebook bores me these days, and there are plenty of other venues where I broadcast (this blog, another blog, twitter). They don’t require “friending” me to have access to my thoughts and interactions. I treat these as public representations of myself, but I have majorly cut down on how much of myself I put out there because of a new sense that I have a private identity to protect. Which is pretty funny if you think about it…I’m willing to say whatever if I know no one cares, but suddenly I am aware of a potential audience and I want to preserve my credibility with them…so I blog less.

But what is the responsibility of a teacher in this time of collapsed private versus public identity? How do other people navigate their online versus face-to-face identity with students?

Via Burnt Out Adjunct I read about Amanda Baggs’ description of her interaction with her environment is as viable a mode of expression as spoken language. Wary of waxing utopianist about the benefits of technology, the assistive tools used by Ms. Baggs and others who might not otherwise be able to communicate their thoughts to others (i.e., where technology tools serve as vehicles for translation) are examples of the connective powers of ICT. Other research on autism indicates that there might be lessons to learned about how we, meaning all humans, learn to use language. It has been noted that at the same time autistic people have difficulty learning language, autism might also create problems grasping the social functions of language. In fact, pragmatic
function of language is the most challenging aspect of learning a language to grasp, and while many of us take for granted our interpretation of nonverbal and tonal clues to language, these are also especially nuanced. When contextualized accordingly, though Baggs’ video contains sounds and motion that we may not have access to interpreting without her key, they are no more concrete than the nonverbal and tonality of “normal” communication.