FOOT I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You

         This article really spoke to me on many different levels. The first is when Thompson is discussing  people's views on sites like Facebook and Twitter. One of the many ideas I share with others about this form of social interaction really shows that I was born 40 years old. On page 2 of his article Thompson says "For many people — particularly anyone over the age of 30 — the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae?" This is really how I have felt about all of these sites for a long time and really still do feel about these sites. I have never really understood, until recently, why these sites were so popular or why they should hold any importance in my life and my career. I couldn't have been more wrong. While I admit I am still not comfortable or even good at speaking through these sites and making connections on them, after reading "I'm So Totally, Digitally Close to You" and after many of the activities in class I see how this could fit in with both. I don't think digital connections should or ever will take the place of face to face interactions, face to face is still the best way to teach and communicate in my mind. However, in the classroom if we utilize the students need to connect using tools they know and enjoy everyday and take advantage of our “ambient awareness” of them, the classroom could be a more exciting place to learn more than we have been able to teach in the past.

        From what I see social sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be great tools in the classroom to get to know everyone in the class and to allow them to get to know you, especially if you are the new teacher. These sites allow you to take a glimpse at things in people's everyday lives that you may not otherwise be able to see.  For example, your student Jane could be going through a hard break up and is randomly bursting into tears during class. If you had been able to read her Facebook status which states the situation, you would not have to ask her in class and would be fully aware of how to handle the situation. This does get complicated when addressing students privacy and how much do you as the teacher really want to know, but there are ways around that too. Like we have discussed many times in class we could easily have the students create a separate account for class use only. Now we are talking about how to use this in the classroom. Again I didn't see any use till recently and even now find my ideas to be weak, so I hope I discover more during the course of this class. However, this gives the students something they know how to use, something they enjoy, and shows them that you are just as multi-modal as they are. Also I really like the multigenre autobiography we did for the class and will probably use this activity as a starter, but the biggest use of these sites I see being good and possible is in the discussions of books. Sometimes in class everyone doesn't get a chance to speak or is too afraid. This medium eliminates the problem of time by allowing them to post anytime before during or after school and eliminates much of the fear of being instantly scrutinized over your comments. And it allows the students to follow more people than they normally would have the brain capacity to, according to Thompson's article. In the article Thompson talks about Shannon Seery and how he followed her blog and what she felt like following others. On the third page Thompson talks about the experience of getting to know your digital friends, "Like many people who live online, she has wound up following a few strangers — though after a few months they no longer feel like strangers, despite the fact that she has never physically met them." If this is the way many people find friendship in strangers, why not in people they see everyday? I believe that online interaction could lead to physical interaction and friendship in school. This could, admittedly this is optimistic, bring together the bully and the victim in friendship. I think this something we can all relate to and hope for.