Cyberpunked: Teachers Re/Authoring Identities Through Digital Media

• In Event: Roundtable Session 69
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring the Role of Digital Media Play in Understanding Identity

Abstract

This paper explores the experiences of teachers who use cyberspace in their teaching practices. We use comparative case study and arts-based inquiry to investigate how two elementary teachers re/author selves as they employ a variety of digital literacies to interact with others online, creating virtual social networks. In viewing cyberspace as a structure for social interactions, we examine how teachers position themselves in relation to others, and how lines of power are transformed. We represent data with research typographies to contribute to new and emotive understandings of the research and argue for possibilities. The research demonstrates that teachers author dynamic positions that shift as the teachers work online. The selves re/authored include communicator, collaborator, trainee, expert, skeptic and dissident.

Authors

• Douglas J. Loveless, James Madison University

• Bryant Griffith, Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi