Here are my comments on visibility. I decided to focus on exposure instead of visibility. I can’t remember if I actually wrote about exposure on any posts, but I do remember bringing it up a few times. While it isn’t the only way I want to think about visibility, it seems to fit well with my own position as a troublemaker–it makes me think of vulnerability, risk and encouraging me/others to move out of our comfort zones.

How do blogs make the thinking, writing, and pedagogy visible to others?

As someone who likes to make trouble (and play with words too), I found myself  wanting to use the term exposure instead of visibility in many of our dialogues/diablogs. To expose something is to lay bare the process of how ideas, knowledge, connections or one’s pedagogy are produced with the goal of critically exploring the limits and possibilities of those various productions. While exposing ourselves is dangerous, it is an important part of critical self-reflection and coming-to-consciousness (and staying there too). The course blog provides students with a dedicated and carefully crafted space for reflecting on and articulating their ideas and experiences.

Exposure is not only about exposing ourselves, however; it is also about being exposed to unfamiliar ways of thinking or feeling. In engaging with a course blog, students have access to other forms of knowledge. Not only can they reflect on different interpretations of the texts on their fellow students’ (or my) posts but they can also critically reflect on the new ideas being generated throughout the blogosphere (in other course blogs, personal blogs, news blogs, etc.).

How do you choose to make your own processes visible to others?

I use my blogs to lay bare my own writing, thinking and teaching process and to encourage others to do the same. I post ideas for academic articles, musings on books that I am reading, reflections on what did and didn’t work in my teaching, preparatory notes for class, fragments of autobiographical essays, and questions about course readings. While exposing these processes makes me vulnerable to the critical scrutiny of my students and other readers of my/our blog, it also opens up the possibility for offering up more authentic expressions of my many selves (the teacher, the student, the curious feminist, the 1970s pop culture fan, the grieving daughter) to the students. Plus, it enables me to engage in the same practices that I expect my students to do. After all,  if I want them to be accountable for their ideas, I should be too.