Anti-Climacus

Generally share Phoebe's befuddlement over Google+. After a few days of everyone posting "what am I supposed to do with this?" it's petered out into... not much. Aside from the privacy controls, which are nice but largely unnecessary for someone like me (few to no professional contacts and no former students on facebook), it's the group chat and video features that look to be the most interesting. A few possible uses:

* Virtual office hours. I have no problems embracing new communications technologies when I teach: a few semesters ago I was a TA for a class that had final exams, which consisted in part of a long list of vocabulary terms the students needed to define. As it turns out, it's easier for all parties involved to answer these questions via a chat that takes perhaps a minute rather than a set visit to office hours which will include smalltalk and may result in the student forgetting to ask about something they needed to know.

Instead, I can envision creating a circle for students in a class, announcing that you're 'hanging out' or available to chat at the beginning of your office hours, and fielding questions or having conversations that way, and only for a strictly-defined period of time. This will have the residual benefit, in some instances, to allow you to answer common questions about papers or exams in a public forum, and thus cut down on the repeated asking-and-answering of "what's the final going to be like?" etc.

* At Duke we developed the good habit of periodically talking to each other about, and commenting on, the work we had in progress. The geographical distribution of political theorists I know has made this a little more difficult, but group video chat should, I'd imagine, make it easier to assemble people for this purpose.