Identity play

I have just spent a very interesting two hours with members of staff and researchers of the Open University of Catalonia today here in beautiful Barcelona. Tomorrow I will be giving the opening keynote at the 8th International Seminar on Teacher Training, but as a precursor, I was invited to meet some of the OUC team. And so I sat and talked in a relaxed but thoughtful atmosphere with some impressive young academics earlier today. We discussed a lot of issues related to distance education and technology mediated learning, including digital identity, social media and open scholarship. Many of the ensuing discussion and questions kept me on my toes, and provoked us all to reconsider our roles as educators in the digital age. It was digital identity though, that most of the group were interested in, and kept returning to talk about.

One of the things the group wanted to discuss was this blog and the way I use it to not only disseminate my ideas, but also as a tool for research. We talked about taking risks, and playing with digital identity. Do we present ourselves differently online to real space? What do we share on the web and what should we keep private? We analysed why I had posted yesterdays story about my Silver Wedding Anniversary, and what were the potential issues with such a public performance of a personal celebration. Someone also wanted to know why I displayed badges on my blog. I responded that it is a measure of peer esteem, which may help some readers to determine whether a site is trustworthy or not. Alternatively, I display them because I am grateful to my own academic community for the way they continue to support this blog (and others) by continually returning to read more. When they vote for my blog as one of the best (and competition is very stiff now, with many excellent e-learning blogs out there), then I feel my work and effort has been worth something.

So, when I returned to my hotel just now and found another award badge waiting for me to display on my blog - this time from the e-Learning Council - it was a welcome addition to the peer reviews I have already received. Thank you to everyone who voted to place me among such an illustrious company. Here's the full list of the top ten (it's actually a top 11).

1. Jane Hart
2. Elliott Masie
3. Cathy Moore
4. (tie) Harold Jarche
4. (tie) Jane Bozarth
5. Steve Wheeler
6. Tom Kuhlmann and Dave Anderson
7. Clark Quinn
8. Clive Shepherd
9. David Kelly
10. Tony Karrer

Perhaps the display of these badges adds something to my digital identity? Who knows...


Identity play by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.