Semioclast

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog reports on a meeting of academics within Second Life where they discussed (chat transcript) the appearance of their online avatars. The responses were interesting if somewhat predictable. The potential of physical appearance to facilitate discussion about gender issues, for example, was a popular one.

Beth Ritter-Guth, who teaches English and women’s studies at Lehigh Carbon Community College, and in Second Life is the glamorous, blonde Desideria Stockton, dressed for the occasion in a purple gown. She said she adopted her Barbie look to facilitate a discussion on gender with her students. “I looked in my niece’s Barbie bag and buy only clothes that are like the clothes in her bag,” she said.

“The real Beth is much less glitzy and thus doesn’t experience the blond jokes or the cutesy-pie crap” that Desideria experiences, she added.

I think it’s interesting to mention this now when legions of grad students are thinking about their first teaching experiences. In nearly every TA training program I have been a part of questions of personal and professional appearance arise: should I dress more professionally or in a way that reflects who I actually am (a luxury at this stage and one that I particularly enjoy)? how do I respond to questions from students about my age, personal life, sexual orientation, relationship status, etc etc?

It’s only natural that these concerns arise in online teaching environments, as well, especially those where participants can assume a unique physical form that is largely unrestricted. One participant in the chat mentions the classic New Yorker cartoon “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” as a partial inspiration for his avatar’s half-man half-dog appearance.

Taking this a step further, on the Internet no one knows your race, gender, height, age, and weight. Does “misrepresenting” actual physical characteristics raise ethical questions for an instructor? What if I were teaching a women’s studies class, for example? Would I be expected to reveal my “real world” gender to my students? How would this effect my students interpretation or contextualization of my statements?

I just got back from presenting a the 20th Penn State Conference on Rhetoric and Composition. This year’s theme was “Rhetorics and Technologies” and there was a lot of talk about computers and composition, technorhetorics, the promise of online communities, etc. etc. Everyone there was energetic and genuinely excited about what was going on. With the lakeside barbecue and rhetoric camp T-shirts it was all quite fun and summer camp-like. I have to say that it was one of the nicest conferences I’ve been to.

There was a lot of talk about the promise of computers to provide a netowrked multimodal education and how we can work Myspace into the classroom. (Who knew composition studies people were so excited about Myspace?) Nearly everyone cited the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

I was on a panel called “Pop Culture and Participatory Technologies” with Heather Urbanski from Lehigh and Matt Mroz from the University of Connecticut. Heather talked about the increasingly ambiguous line between author and audience in participatory technologies and Matt discussed Livejournal and the particular rhetorical practices found there. My paper was about rethinking the relationship between serious play and rhetorical pedagogy. The Q&A was great and lead to some interesting discussions that spanned the rest of the conference.

Things to think about:

• Mashups in the Comp Classroom
• Mixtapes in the Comp Classroom
• Blogging assignments in my class this Fall
• I still have a lot of theory to read
• …a LOT of theory
• There’s not enough talk about IP issues at these things
• There’s a lot of talk about “play” but not a lot of talk about games.
• I expected more WoW and less Myspace, for some reason; it was the other way around.

On a completely personal note: the drive across PA was (almost) the best part. I took my time meandering back from State College listening to Neil Young the whole way. The Appalachians are beautiful and, after living in Buffalo for so long, it’s nice to see mountains again. And, boy is it easy to steer with your knees with a harp in your mouth.

I almost feel bad making Pitt pay for the trip (almost).

When I lived in the UK I worked as a barman (note fancy use of British slang). One night while outside casually smoking Lucky Strikes like some cool American expat I saw a fight break out between some drunks that security had ejected earlier in the evening. The smaller of the two swung a right hook and laid the other guy out. I was really impressed and until this day have cited that as one of only two instances where I have witnessed someone getting one-punched (the other was during a rugby match).

After 10 Bobbies showed up in a van and cleared the area with batons, we found a bloody wad of newspaper next to a trashcan. At the time I didn’t know what it was; I now know that it was a Millwall Brick.

Lessons learned:

1. Dennis Curtin of the Buffalo Old Boys is the only person I’ve seen accomplish this feat.
2. Creative use of game objects in the interest of griefing existed well before Second Life.

Via Bruce Schneier.