I am working towards Digital Professional in Higher
Education badge and at the moment I am finishing my work on the Online Identity
badge. The last activity for the Online Identity badge is to:
Create a blog post
(200-300 words) on the experience of developing your online presence and
comment on two other colleagues blog posts.
To fully participate in the contemporary society, one needs
to be digitally literate as many civic activities are now taking place in the
online space. According to JISC (2014),
there are seven elements of digital literacies: media literacy, information
literacy, digital scholarship, learning skills, ICT literacy, communication and
collaboration, and career and identity management. Beetham and Sharpe’s (2010)
framework show digital literacy as a development process where it is developed from
access and functional skills to higher level capabilities and identity. So, as
a Digital Professionals in Higher Education, we should be able to demonstrate
that we have moved from “I have .., to I can … to I do … to I am ..” – that is
we have developed a digital identity.
The question asks to write about my experience of developing
my online presence. However, my online presence was created over a long period
of time. For example, even my personal blog dates to April 2013. I had finished
my PhD where I looked at the use of ICTs for distance education and was then a Postdoctoral
Research Assistant working with my supervisor Prof. Shirley Williams.
In my thesis I had a chapter on “digital inequality” where I discussed why the
then buzz word “digital divide” was deceptive and in this I used van Dijk’s (2005)
work on a model of successive kinds of access, which is similar to the
developmental process of digital literacy but looking at levels of access. Being
aware of these works, I suppose, have helped me in shaping my digital identity
online.
However, I did not have a personal website until I started
working towards this badge. So, I am going to reflect on my experience of
developing my online presence through my personal website https://sites.google.com/view/tharindu
I wanted my personal website to bring together my scattered
presence on the web to one place where it would be easier to find my work and
contact information. I initially designed the website to have publications,
blog and contact details only. But my colleague, Sandra, was working on CMALT
and she had created her portfolio in a Google Site, which looked good. With this
inspiration I decided to not only put my CMALT portfolio but also FHEA
portfolio online. I had to remove some of the evidence in the portfolio due to
data protection/privacy issues but the section Portfolio in my website now
provides a selection of my instructional design work, CMALT portfolio and its
feedback and my FHEA portfolio. To my surprise, using Google Sites was very
easy. It did not take much time at all. I used images from the stock of CC0
images in Pixabay to add some colour and
visual appeal. I must say I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the automatic
contrast checking and adjusting tool provided by Google Sites to make the site
more accessible. After creating my website, I thought to myself why did I not
do this earlier?
However, my new website was not getting picked up by search
engines. So I searched on the internet and created Google
Crawler request and also registered with Google Analytics so that
I could see the usage of my site. So this exercise have not only resulted in me
creating my website but also getting to know how new sites are listed in search
engines as well as getting my toes dipped in Google Analytics!
I think making a portfolio available online not only help to
build your personal profile but also helps others working towards
qualifications like CMALT or FHEA to see sample portfolios they can take
inspiration from. For example, I found four part series of blog posts
from Matt Jenner about
his submission for SFHEA when I was thinking of working towards SFHEA and it
inspired me to start writing up my portfolio for the same.
While working towards the Online Identity badge I kept on
thinking about projecting a persona via our digital presence. Many people who
are digitally literate consciously manage their digital identity. So,
effectively we see what they want us to see. On the flipside we also project
what we want others to see. I think it is really important that when we look at
someone’s online identity to be aware of the filters that are already there.
References
JISC (6 March 2014). Developing digital literacies. https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/developing-digital-literacies
[accessed 22 August 2018].
Sharpe, R., & Beetham, H. (2010). Understanding
students’ uses of technology for learning: towards creative appropriation,
Rethinking learning for the digital age: how learners shape their experiences
Routledge. 85-99.
van Dijk, J. (2005). The Deepening Divide: Inequalities in
the Information Society. Thousand Oaks: Sage
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