Deep thinking today in the Invitational Summer Institute, deep thinking about how the body and language work to both enable and constrain our connections to others, how differing technologies enable and constrain our connections to others.  I taught this on-line course where I never actually met the students there.  And while I thought I knew those students, I didn't know them in the same ways I know the students that I sit with in classrooms.  I remember one day on line the students started "talking" about how this class was hard and that, after all, it was a summer class and the teacher was acting like it was a regular class during the year with all the work that goes along with it.  I entered into the conversation, saying that I wasn't just a blip on the screen.  I was a really person with feelings and ideas. And yes, this course was like the regular year course only happening in the summer and the students were getting the same credits that the students got during the year for doing the same work.  And I remember doing this workshop one time for a group of teachers, and one of the teachers said, "I was never taught anything about teaching grammar as an undergrad," and I said, "Well, who did you have for methods."  She then told me that I had taught her methods on line.  So I got her email address and I sent her the various activities we did and conversations we had on teaching grammar, but I never heard anything back from her.  What worried me most is that I didn't know her.  Her words I knew on the screen, but not her face or her concerns.

So there is something to me that is very important about being there--really being there with others face-to-face.  Not sure what that is.