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…

International Literacy Day, new ambigram

In celebration of International Literacy Day, here is a new ambigram design - it reads, "Literacy" one way and "Reading" the other! Enjoy. See below for an attempt to use CSS to use to make the rotation automatic when you move your cursor over the image. Check it out....

Learning Futures: The Podcast

Learning Futures: The Podcast

What if education systems were doing more and thinking differently about preparing learners to thrive in the future? The Learning Futures Podcast (from Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College) is a series of conversations on improving education and the future of learning....

Innovation in hybrid/blended doctoral courses

The July 2014 issue of Tech Trends has two articles co-authored by me. The first is part of our ongoing series of articles on Rethinking technology and creativity in the 21st century (you can find the more recent article here and the complete series here). The other...

Deconstructing TV news

The video below has been getting a lot of attention on the blogs lately, and despite that it is pretty good. No kittens riding skateboards or mentos and Coke here. Just a beautifully constructed take down of TV News. A must see for all media literacy courses. Check it...

AERA 2013 – San Francisco, Photos

AERA 2013 - San Francisco, a set on Flickr.Photographs from the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) 2013 at San Francisco. It was great meeting up with friends and colleagues, present two talks and take in some of the sights. Enjoy.

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.

Creativity ambigram

Here's a new ambigram I designed at the kick-off for the MSU Creativity Initiative. I will have more information on that in a later post but for now... enjoy. Creativity, any which way you look at it.

Emailing a plagiarist

I am sending the following email to David Jiles, Ph.D. whose plagiarism I have documented in this posting: David Jiles, Ph.D., Creativity Expert, Plagiarist. The email is as follows: Dear Dr. Jiles -- I have some questions and concerns about your book "Creativity and...

Evaluating creative learning environments: New instrument

Evaluating creative learning environments: New instrument

Note: There is a more recent, May 2023 post (Scaling up the SCALE instrument) that offers an update on other researchers who have utilized the instrument for their own research. Creativity is a key educational goal and essential 21st century skill. That said, much of...

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

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