You have a life?

by | Thursday, March 20, 2008

Story in the NYTimes (forwarded to me by Leigh) titled: Professor as an open book, about how “professors of all ranks and disciplines are revealing such information on public, national platforms: blogs, Web pages, social networking sites, even campus television.” Of course the NYTimes is way behind the curve (as usual?)…

I haven’t been on campus TV (at least not yet) but having some kind of a web presence for the entire time I have been a faculty member (almost a decade now), it is kind of surprising to see a NYTimes article about it, as if it were a new thing. I am quite deliberate about my presence on the web, trying to find the right balance between my professional and personal lives. This is part of a larger goal of integrating across these different roles and I have found developing my web-presence as being extremely valuable in helping me think through these issues.

As I said in my essay “On becoming a website” (I have blogged about it here and you can access the actual article here):

Teaching, I realized, could not be divorced from who I was. I was reminded of something I had read in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (Pirsig. 1984). A character in the book, discussing how to write a perfect novel, says, writing a perfect novel is easy, first become perfect and then just write. Teaching I began to realize was similar. Though becoming perfect was an impossible goal, (could I, or anyone, ever become perfect?) what this story conveyed was that being a good teacher (or a writer) was much more than how we behaved when we were practicing our craft, standing in front of a class or sitting in front of a typewriter. Being a good teacher was somewhat like being a good parent. Being a good parent means becoming a better person overall not just when you are in front of your kids. (Isn’t it surprising how your language improves once you have children, even in situations when your kids are not around!). This is because we know the futility of putting on an act: the truth has a habit of coming out.

I remember as a student having almost no idea of what my professors were like outside of the classroom and I have always believed that these lines we draw between our personal and professional lives is extremely problematic. The NYTimes story ends with a great example of what the situation was like when I was growing up.

When a student spotted Mr. Gosling on a street near campus, he said, “She looked at me in, like, horror. Like, ‘Wait a minute, you have a life?’ The idea that I would continue to exist — it was sort of a violation of her expectations.”

It appears to me that these new tools (Web, blogs, Facebook, what have you) can help address this issue.

Topics related to this post: Personal | Representation | Teaching | Technology

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Wordclouds, mathematics and building a better teacher

Wordclouds, mathematics and building a better teacher

Wordcloud created from all the words in the wikipedia page for "mathematics education"  What does a teacher need to know to intelligently integrate technology in their teaching? Or better still, what is it that teachers need to know to become effective...

Rethinking 7/8 curriculum at Miami/Globe

Rethinking 7/8 curriculum at Miami/Globe

One of the most exciting parts of my job are the cool people I get to meet. Glen Lineberry is one of them. Glen is Principal at Miami Junior-Senior High School. He describes his school as a “small rural school on the move.” The first thing that strikes you when you...

1.5 billion learners out of school: A global educational crisis

1.5 billion learners out of school: A global educational crisis

The scale of the COVID19 crisis and its impact on global education is hard to comprehend. UNESCO has a website (COVID-19 Educational Disruption and Response) providing almost real-time data on school closures. It is shocking to imagine that in a mere 45 days we have...

TPACK in context: Call for papers

TPACK in context: Call for papers

Technology integration in teaching is deeply rooted in specific contexts. One could argue that contextual knowledge is of critical importance to teachers and the absence of it would limit, in significant ways, their effectiveness and success as an educators seeking to...

TPACK newsletter #35, March 2018

TPACK newsletter #35, March 2018

The latest version of the TPACK newsletter (#35) is now available and can be  found here (pdf). All previous issues are archived here. As always, thanks to Judi Harris and her team for all the work that goes into this.

The Brahmin connection

A funny (and yet somewhat sad) story ... So I am in Nagpur airport waiting for my flight, which had been delayed, and I struck up a conversation with a young man there, as one is wont to do. We of course started by complaining about the airlines, then moved on to...

The 5 Spaces Framework for Design in Education: The growth of an idea

The 5 Spaces Framework for Design in Education: The growth of an idea

The Five Spaces for Design in Education framework argues that design in education happens in 5 interrelated spaces: artifacts, processes, experiences, systems and culture. We have typically represented this as follows. Over the past years we have published and...

Teaching design, some ideas

I recently received an email from a teacher in Poland, seeking advice for a curriculum outline for their Design Technology Section. They said, and I quote: Unfortunately, I have minimal experience with the subject as a teacher or as a student in my younger years,...

Creativity, Technology & Teacher Education

Danah Henriksen and I recently edited a special issue of the Journal of Technology and Teacher Education (Volume 23, Number 3, July 2015) devoted to Creativity, Technology and Teacher Education.  This special issue is organized thematically around eight articles...

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *