The Digital Ties that Bind

I had an experience with technology while working on our EDUC 649 leadership presentation last month that really opened my eyes about the extent to which technology can forge connections that would otherwise simply not be possible.

The short version of the story is this: While researching issues relevant to students with disabilities, I interviewed my friend Amanda's husband, who is blind, about the experiences he had as a K-12 student. The stories he shared really changed how I thought about this topic, especially when he discussed how it was palpable to him that his teachers were often irritated by the extra effort required to accommodate his special needs. This is something I had never considered before, and I can say quite honestly that this conversation shifted my thinking about the responsibilities that teachers have to willingly and encouragingly support special needs students.

Sounds fairly straightforward, right? But this conversation would never have been possible without technology. Here's how it all went down and how various technologies played a role:

Amanda and I were friends in high school, but we lost touch after graduation. We reconnected a few years ago via Facebook. I am not particularly active on Facebook, but we really started catching up and keeping in touch last year when we both joined Twitter and started following one another's feeds. Via Twitter, I learned that Amanda had moved out West and gotten married. I "met" her husband and saw pictures of her new home through the photos she took with her iPhone and uploaded to Twitpic. I can honestly say that I have become better friends with Amanda via Twitter than we ever were in high school. We are in contact regularly and I am delighted that we've come back into one another's lives.

Amanda learned about the research I was doing on disability in education when I tweeted about it. She responded by sending me a Direct Message that read: "If you need any human input, my hubby is blind and would be happy to talk about his experiences." I had never met Amanda's husband in person, and had no idea that he is blind. I replied to her message that I would love to talk to him, and she sent me his contact information.

I emailed Amanda's husband, and accessibility technologies allowed him to use his computer to read my email. We both use Gmail and so we hopped onto Gchat, through which we proceeded to have an intriguing and thought-provoking conversation about his experiences as a student. Accessibility technologies enabled us to have the real-time chat conversation from which I learned so much.

Without these technologies, my encounter with Amanda's husband never would have been possible! It was quite an "aha!" moment for me -- I had never experienced technology in this way, and it opened my eyes to the possibility of forging real relationships and having real experiences through the technological mediums of the the virtual world. I haven't seen Amanda in person in over eight years and I've never met her husband, and yet they have both made a real impact on my life. As much as the conversation I had with Amanda's husband radicalized my understanding of the topic we were discussing, so too did the technological chain of events which resulted in the conversation itself radicalize my thinking about the possibilities of social networking.

What great power we have in our hands!