Well, maybe not literally.
Although I did once launch a headless ds106 that spawned a (Photohopped) decapitation theme.
This semester I am teaching, from my home in Arizona, a seminar for five Writing Studies students at Kean University doing their MA Thesis. They’ve already experienced this mode, as it was how I co-taught the Networked Narratives course last semester.
This time, there is no teacher physically in the room. I’m up on the screen!
Photo shared by Hailey in our first ResNetSem meeting
Two of the students, Hailey and Marissa, are my on site assistants, setting up the projector and calling me via Google video chat. We have other channels, twitter, a Slack, and something more low tech– I have been doing weekly individual phone calls.
We were well into a wonderful discussion today on structured serendipity, the students were sharing their own stories of serendipity, and…
TFW in the middle of teaching a class over hangout there is a fire drill on the other end. #resnetsem We were just talking about serendipity
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) September 21, 2017
So we paused, I got updates as they were waiting outside with other students, and then my google video chat rang again… Laura called me from where they were set up out on a patio. We picked up the conversation, but look at this set up!
They are sitting around talking to a laptop perched on a recycling can:
Yes, your teacher is a networked recycling can. My #resnetsem students improvise during fire drill. pic.twitter.com/Ssh8QUhSrk
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) September 21, 2017
Yup, I’m a teacher that looks like a talking head atop a plastic bin!
A fire drill in CAS inspired our thesis students to get creative with their remote meeting! @KeanUniversity @cogdog @MiaZamoraPhD #resnetsem pic.twitter.com/wWNqTRGyFT
— Kean Writing Studies (@KUWSP) September 21, 2017
And it worked great. They were taking / sharing photos. Only at the end did one of them mention curiosity how it looked to other students walking by,s eeing five students talking to a trash can.
Me.
The drill ended, they came inside, and we just kept going…
In #ResNetSem we set up Feedly with subscriptions to class blogs, now doing SlackJam on finding research topic feeds https://t.co/CzyUTI29ws
— Alan Levine (@cogdog) September 21, 2017
With all of this, I am not feeling disembodied, or dis-anything, at all. These students inspire me.
Featured Image: “Whale on the set of Invisible Man” Wikimedia Commons public domain image.
