Reflections on Teaching

After spending a week being super wired at Discovery Communication’s corporate headquarters, and then another three days in a much less tech-oriented setting, it gave me a great opportunity to think about different kinds of social networks.

First we have online networks. We like these people in part because we have a common interest that is not limited by geography. I have become very close to people I have met and interacted with online, but there is something that changes when you meet folks face-to-face that you have only known online. Sometimes, they are exactly like you expect. Sometimes they do not meet your expectations (for good or ill), but it changes what you know about and how you feel about that person. There is a certain longing most of us have to meet our online friends or professional colleagues in person. I know other people experience it because I hear them going to some effort to meet up whenever it’s possible. So they may be “virtual” but our tendency as humans are to make the real, and face-to-face.

Then, I spent time with the Amish, who eschew most technology from the industrial era, let alone the digital one we now inhabit. They have, however, a very complex social network, and although they are “separate” from their “English” (non-Amish) neighbors, my aunt is a part of that network. How did that happen? How does a non-tech social network work? What did it tell me about how my own networks function?

My aunt has lived in two Amish communities as an adult. When I was in elementary school, she lived in a farmhouse in Western New York in the Conawengo Valley. I visited her the summer between fifth and sixth grade in 1976. It exposed me to a new and different culture. After the Loma Prieta earthquake, her husband (born and raised in the Lake Erie area) wanted to leave California, so they returned to the Eastern United States to Belleville, PA. In both places, she has built ties to the Amish community, who are not always beloved by their neighbors, most of whom come from an Amish background (surnames of Yoder, Peachy, Beachey, etc.) but don’t realize this connection, and are frustrated with Amish “backwardness” and “clannishness”. My aunt builds ties through a system of mutual favors and listening to them. The Amish of Belleville do include some car Amish (ones who have split off from “old order” groups), but most of the high groups, do not. They will accept rides, and a car is quicker than a horse and buggy, so she gives rides.

But, she is more than a taxi service. Many more of the Belleville folks have phones than I recall seeing in Conawengo, but this was a big lesson to me, the advances in technology that the phone brings does not obviate the need for “connectors” like my aunt. People call her because she knows things, or where to find things, and travels about and shares information. So on our trip, she was asked to track down more canning jars and given a price the person was willing to spend. They could have called around themselves, but they knew asking my aunt was probably going to be quicker. How many times do we have a go-to person for information in our own PLN? I know I often operate in that capacity. I know that if I want to find someone online, the first person to ask is Lisa Durff. My aunt is in a position like that in her community.

The other part of this trip was my documentation on my micro-blog (http://mizmercer.tumblr.com) and on Plurk/Twitter. I was putting up posts and pictures about what I was seeing and learning from my cell phone, as we traveled through the valley. People were responding on Plurk and Twitter, and asking questions. My aunt was amazed at everyone’s interest, and that I had people following me, just as I was amazed at the role she played in her community. My new cell made communicating with my community easier, and allowed a conversation to take place as I went along, but both my aunt’s network, and my network have many more things in common than they have differences. The technology is a tool; a great tool, a tool I love, a tool that makes many more things possible, but without the people, it’s just a hunk of plastic, metal, and chips. That story I told was interesting and got a response not because I was using my cell phone but because of the people involved.

Ken Shelton put it best when asked his take-away from the DEN National Institute, “it’s the network.” It’s what I’ve learned from DEN, NECC, and from my aunt and her Amish neighbors. Thanks for the lesson folks!