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BLOG #1: Online participation and digital literacies
As a simulation educator I promote reflective practice with my learners in post-action debriefing sessions. This fortnight I have really delved deeps as this topic has resulted in a great deal of reflection as I examined my personal and professional online participation and evaluating just how digitally literate I am. Who am I in the digital age? Well I consider my self a digital immigrant. White, D. & Le Cornu, A. in their 2011 paper Visitors and residents: A new typology for online engagement, define the digital immigrant as "those of us not born into the digital world". I was not born into the digital world, it was born into my world. I choose daily to enter into the digital world, but it is definitely my second language! How did I become fluent? To be honest I am only fluent in a few dialects - Twitter, FB, Instagram, LinkedIn, to name a few. The others like Tik Tok just seem like a language I don't want to learn (not even sure I spelt it right). Mostly this decision to speak on certain digital languages is about return on investment. With Twitter, FB, Instagram I know the rules of engagement, and what rewards I get out of choosing to engage, but those other platforms... what can they offer me that I don't already have? If it isn't broken don't fix it!
I am very conscious of how I present myself in the online space. I have spent years building my professional profile, so am very particular to control, where I can, the digital footprint I leave. I have some platforms that I engage with for personal use, and others that are purely professional. Whilst it was my initial aim that never the two would meet - it has not been the case. Facebook, my personal world, has slowly been infiltrated by professional colleagues, so that now it is no longer just family and close friends with whom I share my private time!
Even this blog post scares me. Sharing my unformed thoughts, with people I have only just met. I haven't had time to polish my words, fact check the content...Will they judge me? Once I hit publish it is like exposing myself to the world. I feel incredibly vulnerable.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Kirsty. I must say that I do understand that feeling of vulnerability that you mentioned. I thought of it the exact same way too. Putting up a blog post last week for Topic 1 on the ONL was my absolute first ever! Never thought I would see that day! But it felt good somehow no matter the fear! Haha! Also, I am one of the few educators I know who does not have any FB, Twitter, Instagram accounts. I think it started as a personal philosophy cum challenge that I shall refrain from creating any social media accounts. I didn't think I would last this long. But I do have a LinkedIn account now. I'm just reflecting on what you asked, "what can they offer me that I don't already have?" It's an interesting reflection for sure! Perhaps having an account in any one of those other social media platforms could give us an insight into how our students communicate/interact, engage in informal "knowledge-exchange", collaboratively discover knowledge, their online identities and how these impact their online discourse and narratives that they produce. Maybe coming from a language and linguistics field, this would be the incentive for me to engage students in these online spaces. Cheers for the post, Kirsty!
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