George's Blog

As someone whose online presence is not very extensive, there were still some surprises. I had chosen to map out my LinkedIn connections and a Twitter feed that I follow (as I myself don’t have any followers…).

By using Socilab’s LinkedIn Network Visualization and Analysis tool, I was able to create the visualization seen above. I’m represented by the blue dot in the center. Not surprisingly, I have a cluster of interconnected dots representing my colleagues in the education field. In my experience, I’ve found that the educational researcher community is quite tight-knit (at least in Ontario). I feel I have the opportunity to grow this segment. There are also a number of outliers that aren’t connected to each other and these are some of my social connections that I’ve connected to on LinkedIn. While the differing industries isn’t surprising, it’s interesting that they aren’t connected. Some of them don’t know each other, but I know that some do. The choice of whether to connect on certain platforms but not others is fascinating.

I generated this second image from an analytics and visualization tool called tweepsmap. It’s quite useful in generating reports on who’s following you and which tweets are generating the most activity. I follow the local TV station here in Toronto called CP24 and I mapped out their following with tweepsmap. News media typically get a large following which is not surprising, but the fact that there are followers in 5 countries and 12 cities (for a local station) is impressive. My guess would be many of those followers are expats who want to keep track of what’s going on at home.

Mapping out my LinkedIn connections showed me just who I’m connected with. It’s not a coincidence that those connected closest to me are the ones I work with more regularly. The network could definitely be built out more (both in education and other). Of course I will never have the reach of the likes of CP24, but each connection I make could have a multiplier effect of opening new links.

Before starting the MALAT program, I had never stopped and thought about my digital presence and identity. While like many people I use social media and have a presence online, they were all just means to serve an end. Whether it be a web search to find an answer or Facebook to reconnect with old friends, most of my interactions with online applications have been brief and my resident-visitor typology map reflects that. I have always thought of myself as a shyer and private person and therefore I’ve never really drawn attention to myself, online or otherwise. My Facebook while private, has had very few posts attributed to me. One could say that this lack of digital presence is my online identity. Being an introvert isn’t intrinsically a bad thing and I wouldn’t want my digital presence and identity to represent someone that is not me.

 

Jenkins (2009) notes 4 types of participatory culture: 1) Affiliations, 2) Expressions, 3) Collaborative Problem Solving, and 4) Circulations. I see myself taking part in 2 of them, namely affiliations and collaborative problem solving. I believe they go hand-in-hand since the more affiliations that I’m a part of, the more opportunities that I will have in working collaboratively to solve a problem.

This is all in the professional sense as I feel my digital presence in that quadrant is more lacking. Also, I’m more self-aware of this space as it is intended to be public. Boyd (2010) talks about the persistence, replicability, scalability, and searchability of what you put in a ‘networked public’, which is a public networked digital space. These factors should make one think twice about anything they upload online. ‘Persistence’ means anything that is put up will stay there. Also if your network is vast, the content is also scalable to reach a wider audience than you intend. In today’s day and age, everyone searches everything from nuclear superpowers to their own name. I have papers uploaded to Academia.edu and hope to refine my presence there a little more. Making connections with researchers is also part of my plan. My LinkedIn could do with some spring cleaning as well.

I do have reservations about the ‘invisible audiences’ that are free to come and go on my webpage (Boyd, 2010). Because you don’t know who may view your page, it can be difficult to tailor according to your audience. I have always learned to write to your audience as different people may interpret things differently. This can be challenging when anyone could be your audience (or no one).

In the end, I think the questions that Schryver (2013) postulates are very important in terms of how I will approach digital identity: “Are you proud of your digital presence? Will you be proud of it in ten years? Are there things that are untrue or pertain someone with the same name? What can you do about that?”. As I progress in this program, these will be some of the questions that I will keep in the back of my mind as I make my posts and leave my digital footprint.

Boyd, D. (2011). Social network sites as networked publics: Affordances, dynamics, and implications. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed.), A Networked Self (pp. 39–58). New York, NY: Rutledge.

Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century. MIT Press.

Schryver, K. (2013, February 5). Who are you online? Considering issues of web identity. The New York Times.

I would say I’m a pretty average internet user, but not as active on social media as most of the people in my age group (or even older for that matter). I always knew that I was more of a consumer of media rather than a generator. I’m afraid my creativity is sorely lacking, but I’m also a fairly private person. Seeing my map lean more heavily on the visitor side while not surprising, shows how much I try not to leave a presence online.

I hope though this program I can get over being just a “lurker” on the web and create my own presence, which will allow me to really network with not just everyone in the MALAT program, but with more like-minded people beyond. See below for my map.

Visitor and Resident Map

The virtual symposium last week was very interesting and informative. While I knew learning spans all sectors and careers, the theory behind learning in each sector while different have similar roots. I was especially taken by Dave Cormier’s idea of the rhizome. How learning can take various twists and turns when unrestricted, like ‘weeds’. I’ve seen diagrams similar to the learning ecosystem that he presented and had always wondered what an ideal online learning environment should look like. In my work, I have a project which looks at hybrid learning and I believe rhizomatic learning is worth exploring, at least for the online component. We have had issues with students building an online community organically. Hopefully, by allowing an encouraging a free space, more students will take up building such an ecosystem.

A common theme that came up over the course of the week was open learning and what really constitutes open learning. I’ve learned that open is not just restricted to free or close to free, but also about access. I agree with Catherine Cronin’s opinion on open educational practices and the use of open educational resources. There is a little murkiness in terms of licensing, but I believe truly open resources should be fully shared and there shouldn’t be ambiguity in usage.

Gary Rosorough’s perspective on leading a team to create courses was also very motivating for me. I really agree with his philosophy of ‘acknowledging expertise’ and promoting the ‘yes we can’ culture. I’ve often found that the knowledge that team members bring to the table is not being utilized enough which can be a loss on many fronts including devaluing each team member’s contribution. Shared leadership has recently been promoted at my organization which I hope will translate into having each member of a team being able to voice their opinions and contribute to the direction of where a project is heading. Gary mentions that the educational analysts being ‘gatekeepers’, but as an analyst myself, I don’t really see myself as a gatekeeper. The faculty or in my case teachers or other senior staff are at times the true gatekeepers in my mind, because they are the ones who are front line and ‘subject experts’. Perhaps the staff that Gary works with have slightly different roles than myself or what we have in the K-12 system.

I really appreciate the fact that students from the last cohort have been able to share their research and findings. Their insights into the program have been inspiring. From looking at the padlet and also viewing Lillian Chumbley’s presentation, I can see some students gravitated towards researching topics that included learning with mental health (e.g., PTDS) or special education needs (due to FASD) which is very worthwhile.

Overall it’s been a whirlwind of a week, but I’m fired up to start getting my hands dirty and really think about my own research question(s).