Professor Avatar

Every week of the semester a professor invites all of his students to his home. He greets them at the door wearing a red Hawaiian shirt, holding a lime margarita in his right hand and a wrinkled, fat cigar in the other...
Academic avatars are also powerful teaching tools. Not in the sense that it is inherently good to substitute an authentic, teacherly self with a virtual one, but in the sense of allowing the live, teaching self to have more qualitative, spontaneous and fruitful interaction in the classroom. The Teaching Avatar, in his/her virtual environment, can be utilized to channel traditional pedagogies so that a live teacher can spend more time on dynamic activities like discussion and groupwork during the class period.