Nothing meaningful has yet replaced them. Teachers struggle to communicate and assert authority through text alone, and students lose boundaries and guidelines commonly assumed in facetoface communication. Lists of flagged messages reduce knowledgesharing to bare information exchange and personal identities to grammatical error. If participants search for meaning in cyber school, they are not likely to find it. Instead of becoming a focus of learning, it becomes a peripheral environment, leaving students more and more on the outer and teachers struggling to be heard.
Masks conceal and reveal.
The problem with the Internet is that it is not selective in what it conceals or reveals. Traditional masks are lost and no new ones have been invented to take their place. The online learning environment begs invention of appropriate masks and rituals. It begs delineation of a meaningful community with shared values. Cyber school needs to learn from religion and theatre.