Reflection on Turkle reading for 2/7

I agree that students' virtual identities are not the ones teachers want to be enriched first and foremost. Sure, the benefits might trickle over into their RL identities but it doesn't seem like much from experience. I'd rather not teach a bunch of kids who care little about the channels we're using with them (talking, voices, body language, etc).

Doesn't enriching any identity, whether virtual or real, benefit the person to which that identity belongs?

After starting this course I decided to revisit the virtual world and checkout a few chat rooms. It does not appear that much has change from when I first visited them over a decade ago. I was in a room that was titled "Talk" and there was a lot of chatting going on but nothing substantial, though there was plenty of name calling and obscenities.

However, eventually I ended up chatting with someone about teaching. I told this person about how I was frustrated last semester because of the lack of attention of many of the students. This person then asked what would I do to make learning interesting for her. It dawned on me that, for a variety of reasons, I had not done much of this for the students I had last semester and that it is not just the students who need to pay attention but that I need to make education interesting for them. I think that this includes learning to interact with students in the ways that they are accustomed.