Digital Presence? Digital Identity? Digital Citizenship?

Introducing, facilitating, training and talking about ePortfolios inveriably leads to consider digital identity, digital competencies and digital citizenship. These are the concepts bandied in educational circles. Increased use of tools purposefully to support learning and framed targeted use of tools to make sense of and create own understanding of the information we have access are redefining how we learn.
Developing an ePortfolio is one way to build sound digital competencies, alongside leaving a purposeful digital footprint.
I read an article this week that prompted me to think about Digital Identity, Digital Presence and Digital Citizenship.

In "What digital presence?" Louise Merzeau describes and explains how we build a digital presence from managing our Digital Identity and exercising our freedom to act or think online.
Her view point has resonated with me: while the technology as it stands to date only allows us to take limited steps to fully control our digital identity,  we as individuals can apply consciousness to our actions when using online services, and develop a managed digital presence. And collectively as users we can establish good practice.
Louise's analysis starts with the traces left behind as we use the internet.
She describes some traces as deliberate: we fill in a form when shopping online.
Some others are created when communicating and sharing: we "like" a Facebook friend's status, we leave a comment on a blogpost.
In both cases these traces are left voluntarily.
Our online activity, using a browser or being connected on LinkedIn, also and mainly generates quantities of traces that we leave behind unintentionally. As a result we in fact have very little control over the activity that shapes our digital identity.
Given the current technology, networks and economic strategies, we leave traces that we do not manage and thus we can not manage our digital identity if we reduce it to the traces we leave. While personal data, traces, privacy... are the object of necessary, current political, ethical and technical debates, they take time to concretise.
What to do in the meantime? We can be proactive and build a digital presence, with applying  deliberate behaviors associated with its management. Louise is not talking about an online presence from a marketing perspective though. While having a digital presence, reputation, clout are legitimate quests that relies on the traces left, she talks rather of being digitally present.
She proposes to include elements of temporality, just like in real life: our digital life is not made of traces that accumulate and that can be used in any order. Introducing the concept of time into our digital activity allows to evaluate and give context to the traces that are left behind for ever. And developing a coherent, rich presence in networks is the surest way to leave traces that are managed.
 Gmail and Facebook, amongst others, are free but we actually pay for them with our personal data: it is the currency, it has economical value for these businesses. Rather than being paranoid and buy in the media frenzy around the topic, best is to get informed, investigate options and negotiate what we are prepared to concede.
Developing sound digital competencies, expressing oneself in the right place in the right tone is also empowering beyond protection per se. Digital competence involves moving from being a consumer of services to being a content producer. Digital competence also involves using the tools to serve our purpose, for information gathering, collaboration, etc.  Just as we do in real life, we need to experience different settings, learn about them, adjust our behaviours, develop our memory of what we did, what we chose to forget, what we develop, what we can share when online.
Information on the web has also become highly personalized, we go and get the information we want and often we go to information that has been validated by someone on our networks, Twitter for instance. Information across the board is no longer top down. Louise argues that beyond the public/private debate, it is the high degree of personalization of the information that is influencing behaviors: we are not reading any article, we are reading an article that has been recommended.
The lines between our private (family, friends…) and public (work, community…) lines feel they are blurring since we are using similar platforms to live our digital life. But Louise also argues that not all conversations on networks are to be considered as public, just like the conversation at a nearby table in a café. It is how we use the information we have about others that matters: can we exploit any information we may come across? Is it because it is technically accessible that we can drop our ethical considerations and use the image of a drunken 16 year old to refuse him a job when five years on he presents an otherwise good CV?

All these behaviors are fairly new still and we all are learning together, while big corporate online services companies are moving at a very fast pace with their offerings so that we have little time to pause and think about what we are actually doing!
Schools and universities have a big role to play in framing theses competencies as they have no choice but to work with the tools.
Careful choice around sustainable online practices, scaffolded by teachers who themselves are proactive about their digital presence is attainable for learners from an early age, it is about instilling valuable behaviours that grow and evolve with the different life cycle we go through. Which could be captured, thought about and shared meaningfully and purposefully in an ePortfolio! I know you knew this was coming!

Steps towards what? More thoughts fuelled by ICOT2013

I have just finished reading this post entitled "Change or Die".  Two points stick with me:

- change is not supported as the overall agenda is focused on improvement rather than transformation
- there is a lack of "big picture", where steps are managed rather than lead towards a clear common vision.

Individuals, like you and I, have enjoyed and continue to get benefit from discussing, reading, participating 2cts worth to debates, trying to make sense of what Learning is about. I  personally often feel that to give it serious thought and consideration (and to be taken more seriously!), I need to be more systematic (oh here you are Ruth: that is a trigger word that has you switched off!) in order to reflect and take action. This is certainly what Going Back to the Drawing Board means for me.

But hear me out!  I would be motivated to systematise my approach if there was a need (self motivated or else) to have an outcome for a particular purpose. I am in the rather comfortable position at the moment where no one demands of me to perform at any level. This affords me to spend time considering a range of issues arising from different sectors and interests. I choose to spend time with the NZAFT and associated projects, I choose to continue to support people use of myPortfolio, MoE funded or not,  I choose to keep informed to do these to the best I can and if I have the opportunity, to move things along. I assume that if I was employed as a teacher in a school, time, energy and freedom spent on these choices would be considerably limited.

I have been freed to investigate in my own terms, to learn stuff when the need arose, to seek and find help, to do and undo, to have the confidence and curiosity to do so,  to bring to the light that my absence of formal linguistic training (I am often "found out" in conversation with Language teachers! ) can be made up for with other aptitudes and understanding of Learning I have developed, to create, maintain and continue to widen a network of thought provoking, informed, convincing professionals beyond school colleagues and my immediate community of practice.  It is my own paradigm shift: I have changed. What I have learnt in the last couple of years, exposing myself to arguments and thoughts about teaching, learning, assessments, ICT, theories, practices, social media, internet,  beyond the ones imposed by a manager or a system, is that "things do not have to be the way they are" and that "we don't know what we don't know".  Hence I can say here that all I have learnt from this freedom I would wish to continue to grow in any circumstances.

Kerry Spackman The Moral Scale

But what I can say also is that I am unsure of the reasons why I am doing it...
- What level of the Moral Scale  am I really operating at? Am I doing this for me only (since I have no obligation) ?
- Am I doing this because I am looking to "make a dent in the universe?" (Kerry Spackman at ICOT2013) ?
I would like to think it is about taking a tiny step on the Bottom Up approach ladder.

Kerry Spackman The Moral Scale

So to go back to Change or Die: What /who makes a vision clear enough, encompassing enough, trusted enough and supported enough for every teacher to feel empowered that they too can change, and as a result  for every learner to learn to be in control of their learning? That the move from thinking at Level 1 "How does it affect me?" to Level 5 "What's in this for society as an institution?" is enabled?

Derek Wenmoth: Change or Die? Vision, Trust and Support

While aspects of Kerry Spackman's keynote varied from boring me to worrying me  (I am not convinced that I need Knights to save me) one key message that was taken away, as aptly highlighted by Derek Wenmoth, is that "influencing peoples beliefs is very important in the process of bringing about change in society".

And this is something that every teacher can do. Children must be prepared for the world they live in not the one I grew up in: in my today's world, the population is aging and all expect to live a long time, ethnic groups learn to mix and mingle, notions of distance and time are just about a thing of the past, values are open for discussion etc. So who better than a teacher should be in the position to present a clear vision of the future to their students, and should help each one of them make sense of it in their own term, lead them to want to be involved, so that they grow to concern themselves with society and their role within it? All teachers need to question what they do if they are to model and instill this effectively.  And that means questioning and contribute to transform the system they work in.

via Rachel Saxton  ZenPencil

So why am I writing this messy post? If I really want to go Back to the Drawing Board, I need to know where I have been.  I ought to see more clearly where I am at now. And then it will inform me of where I should take my next step.  In the immediate future, it involves taking a step with you Ruth as you go back to school. Then I will see.