I Post, Therfore I Am

After using the Alvermann quote last week, I started thinking more and more about the types of reading and writing students encounter in their everyday lives, or the 'multiliteracies' as she describes them.

Today's adolescence lives the kind of dual lifestyle we've always heard about since the dawn of the Internet. There's the real 'you', and then there's the 'you' on the Internet. Think back- remember how mild mannered Mr. Anderson, office drown, was the mysterious Neo on the web first before ever becoming aware of the Matrix? I feel like in the 1990s pop culture insinuated that this type of dual identity was all the rage. The idea that you can have a whole life online has become a reality for millions of Americans, adolescence included. Only more often than not, it's not the secret identity/ alias persona we always predicted. "You" online is simply just that. You. Online.

Today's youth, en masse, may be the most prolific generation of writers history has ever seen. They are literally living as the hero of their own story and recording (and sharing) everyday of their lives through writing... all in 140 characters spurts. This is the first generation that can get ideas published and available to a world wide audience within seconds, not years, of writing.

Call me crazy, but I think it might be time we started focusing on HOW these kids are presenting themselves online. What does your writing style say about you? Are you ideas coherent and well supported? Do your grammar and/or spelling choices get in the way of your readers comprehending what you are trying to say? These are all questions that we pose to students when we ask them to write academic papers. Maybe we should start addressing their real world applicability in class instead of pretending that academic writing and Internet communication are totally unrelated. Perhaps instead of reworking the 5 paragraph essay one more time, we could maybe skip it every few semesters and spend a little time on what makes a good post. I'm pretty sure that would finally put an end to the ever present question of "When are we ever gonna use this?"

This would also lay the ground work to start discussing not just what students are putting on the Internet, but how they are being perceived by others and even the larger questions of Internet etiquette, rights and responsibilities, and how to use technology in general. The Internet provides us with two contradictory and yet simultaneous phenomenon; we have the ability to express and react to ideas and concepts anonymously AND allows every detail of our lives to be shared with anyone with the interest and know how to access our information. I sometimes wonder if young people, or any one for that matter, realize just who is checking in on them. For the past few years now, my boss at camp has had to integrate a talk on appropriate Facebook pictures and postings into the staff training he delivers to recent high school graduates and college students, many of whom have never stopped to consider that the kids they work with, parents in the community, and potential employers can all find their way onto their profile pages, despite their privacy settings. A number of my former students have friended me over the past few years. Occasionally I throw a comment on a questionable post or picture that shows up in my news feed. The response (if there is one) is either a confession of mild embarrassment or "LoL! Why are you looking?" The answer of course is that usually I'm not, but these things have a way of surfacing regardless of whether or not I was the intended audience.

I'm not saying that these questions aren't being brought up in classrooms already, but from what I have seen they are typically given a disproportionately small amount of attention when you really think about how much time any of us, students or adults, spend online. In Frontline's 'Digital Nation', Douglas Rushkoff says, "Over the past 20 years... the net has changed from a thing one does to the way one lives." Shouldn't our curriculum reflect this change?