Cynthia Alvarado

Activity 1 I am happy to say that most of what came up were the professional things that I had hoped were contributing to my digital identity, such as work with professional groups and things I have written. However, another thing that came up, which I was aware of, since I get Google notices of things that come out containing my name, was a very crude statement from someone with the same name regarding their participation in a crime. This could be a real problem if, say, a potential employer attributed it to me.

Activity 2 I do think, to a certain extent, we are what we share, at least in a public sense. Of course, we do not control all that is shared about us, hence my monitoring of my name using Google. I have tried to be intentional about sharing and publishing positive and useful things, both professionally and personally, because your reputation really is valuable, especially when so many people can be aware of you without your knowledge or consent.

I also agree that such wide availability of ideas does stimulate the thinking of others and we are much smarter collectively than we are individually.

I prefer to use sources that require attribution. I think it is important to be able to trace the ideas back to their creators. I want my students to realize that information doesn't grow on trees or magically appear, people create it. By inference this means that they, too can create information. I don't need it to be fully in the public domain to be useful, but it does work better most times for my purposes if derivatives are allowed. I am all about the mashup. I like my students to put together and connect things from different sources, showing that they get the original significance and know where it came from (attribution). If you can't make derivatives, it becomes a static piece, which seems to me to be much less useful to both student learning and my teaching.

Hello, I'm Cynthia Alvarado, a sometimes adjunct professor of education and a full-time teacher librarian. I have long been a consumer and participant in various OER, but would like to be more effective. I was thrilled to see that Scott's diagram had been translated into Spanish, as I sometimes help my husband develop training materials in that language and it will be a great asset. My blog, such as it is, is found at http://blog.dearbornschools.org/alvarac/.

I am sure, some of us, myself included, would be able to take on translation projects over time, if nothing comparable is available in some major in some major language like French or Spanish. (I'm only reliable in Spanish.)

I find it very interesting that The Museo National has its website in English. There is really no reason, in this diverse group, that we could not also use resources in other languages.