Selfie Avatar:

The things that shape my identity as a teacher are my family.  I care about students because I care about my own children, I can relate to students because I relate to my kids.  I think being a parent gives you a great advantage as a teacher because you have your own practice versions at home.

When I think about what is an avatar, I am immediately picturing Avatar the movie, where the disabled man goes into virtual reality and lives a different life through his Avatar.  He does not want to come back out, and he has a vested interest in what is happening in this VR world.  I believe there is a sequel in the works.  So I guess an avatar is a character version of yourself, which is why I chose to change my family photos with an app called cartoon on my phone.  There was a free trial then a subscription (3.99 I believe) I will cancel before that happens.  I did feel I had to change the pictures in the collage so they looked more character like to be considered avatars.  I think they ended up more like paintings or drawings, but the whole image came across the way I wanted.

This weeks reading was very interesting.  I felt like every female, in every country could relate to this story in some way.  Liao talks about body image and societal norms in the online world, the way I remember chatting in high school.  The fact that she is struggling to create a gender neutral avatar (and her avatar is suffering) is a complex thought.  She at one time uses a snowman because she is at odds with the male/female body choices she is offered in this SL world.  “Still, I am happy to be a snowman, because I believe it helps to create space for imaging a self that may be different from my physical appearance” ( Liao pp 31).

Liao also talks about autoethnography.  She says “Autoethnography works to hold self and culture together. . . you come to understand yourself in deeper ways, and with understanding yourself comes understanding others” (pp 32).  I like this explanation, I have read this word many times, and I think this is the first time I understood what it meant.  So I am hoping to use autoethnography in my family life and in myself, to learn internally and project that learning to others as a future teacher.

References:

Liao, C. (2008). My metamorphic avatar journey (Links to an external site.). Visual Culture & Gender, 3, 30-39.