1.
After reading Arola’s article and taking into
consideration the eight-year time lapse, would you agree or disagree that the
use of templates (when developing pages or interacting with social media) limit
individual representation and leave users unaware of the power of design? When
engaging with various platforms there tends to be a strict design that users
are unable to alter, however, there is the ability for textual design to take
place when dealing with texts that enter a circulation of remediation and
ratification within sharing networks due to the communication allowed by such
templates. I know that Arola focuses more on personal homepages that display an
individual’s bio, but at what point should concern for design take precedence
over the accessibility that allows for a sharing of knowledge that to an extent
also reflects an individual’s identification as seen in the use of social media?
2.
I enjoyed reading Tobin’s article and was left
wondering how would an instructor go about “bridging the gap” between student
and instructor perception of roles in a classroom setting? Could basing one’s
behavior as an instructor off of a metaphor (like the ones presented)
potentially harm the dynamic of the classroom as opposed to remaining flexible in
role when addressing the students? And to what extent should the authority dynamic
of a classroom be made clear based off an instructor’s identity in the classroom?
I would argue that templates serve a specific purpose, allowing users to easily and efficiently represent themselves online. With that said, however, there is a limit to what these templates allow us to represent about ourselves and in a way serve to define what parts of our identity are worthy of representation, or at least which ones are more important than other aspects. It does, to a degree, however give the user a puzzle in which to make the template work for them. For example when Arola discusses her choice of a particular Myspace theme code to make her look energetic and whimsical, it is the understanding that this is in contrast to what Facebook allows. While design itself may not be a way in which we can present ourselves as energetic and whimsical it could simply be posing a challenge to the user to find a way within the online format presented by Facebook that we are able to present that same image. Perhaps that is with a particular profile photo, or in more updated versions of Facebook, a cover photo. This could be paralleled to a writing assignment. Let's say a professor assigns a project with very specific and strict guidelines on what the project is to be about and what formatting is to be used. The challenge to the writer is the same as the challenge to the online user, to find a way to represent myself as authentically and intentionally as possible within the framework given.
ReplyDeleteHi Sidney
ReplyDeleteThinking about your questions regarding the Tobin piece and I can't help but wonder if the beginning of the essay suggests that Tobin is himself is used to adopting a flexible switching between roles as he attempts to figure out which metaphor would work best for a given class. He cycles in his head through various approaches, dismisses some off hand, attempting others while working with a less than enthused classroom. If anything, his lack of success in the example suggests that there is more at work here than just being willing to switch roles to fit the situation. Maybe an instructor must be willing to wear these roles not only as tools to help work within a classroom but also as sincere modes of communication. Who hasn’t been taken out of a performance by an actor who clearly hasn’t bought into the role they are playing or a teacher presenting a point of view they obviously don’t believe in? Perhaps a real willingness to inhabit these roles and not their begrudged use would allow the classroom dynamics not to crumble where it so clearly did in Tobin’s example.
Concerning how much of a classroom’s authority dynamic should be based off the role a teacher is inhabiting I can’t help but suggest that a large part of a teacher’s job is to be able to manipulate their authority within a classroom depending on the situation. We talk a lot about decentering authority and not making ourselves the dominant figure in the classroom. However, that very decentering is an act only executable by the person in the room with authority and if we bring a classroom’s attention back to us at the end of class, to remind them about homework, it functions as a reinforcing of our authority by ending the class with it all attention back in us as teachers. Even as we ask students to circle desks we cannot eliminate authority. We can only shape it and distribute it, investing some in our students, while always retaining the right to re-assume that authority again at a moment’s notice. I once had a professor who I thought made a good point. He said, “teaching is the art of convincing a group of people that you know exactly as much as they think you do”. In a roundabout way I think he was making the point that teaching is about wielding authority sometimes more so than it is wielding expertise.