flaneuse.org

I’ve been thinking a lot about facebook. Outside of class reading and writing, I would guess that one of the things our students spend the most time on would be facebook. I’ve started checking it not just every morning but throughout the day — wanting to know what people are up to, looking for new people to find me, just killing time. But then comes the question — when I hear from someone for the first time, how do I represent myself? Who am I, on facebook, as opposed to my vita, my conversations with family and friends — we use language to represent ourselves in many different ways.

Facebook, though, is different. In the same space, I am many different people — all of whom leave a trail that can be traced back. I am a professor to those students who friend me, so sometimes they ask me questions but more often, I get a chance to know who they are in a more complete way than I would just in class. I am a peer to other researchers and friends who I know from school and conferences. It’s funny to login to see that someone else just tagged the article I was going to tag — and to know so many other people are part of this larger conversation about what is going on with literacy and technology. Even the venerable gray lady, the New York Times, has started to look at issues of reading today. Their most recent article concerned gaming and literacy and, judging from the comments, did not get the most positive reception.

I am also a former seventh grade teacher whose students have reached out to her; I am a former colleague from those teaching days. I am a new professor revving up for tenure. I am a friend even to people I know through other people but not in my own right. There’s something pretty new and interesting going on here, that much I can say.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 2:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.