Digital Identity Wiki: Resources

Table of contents

1. Readings [edit]

2. Resources [edit]

Readings [edit]

boyd, danah. (2007). “Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?”Knowledge Tree 13, May. 

boyd,dana and Alice Marwick (2009). “The Conundrum of Visibility.” Journal of Children & Media, 3(4):410-­‐414. 

Wikinomics Blog: The Digital Identity Divide : interesting for the comments generated on this piece.

Richardson, Will Footprints in the Digital AgeEducational Leadership, November 2008

Resources [edit]

MIT's Personas : part of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit at the MIT Museum "creates a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you."

: Charles Leadbeater's video about mass innovation and idea sharing on the internet. Consider the implications for digital identity formation/ development/management.

Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard: Digital Natives - a treasure trove of research, publications and thoughtful blog posts about digital identity and related issues.

Questions to Consider

Week 1 Theme: Us 

  • Representations of self on the internet - What/who is included? What/who is missing? Thoughts about this.
  • "You are what you share." What do you think about this statement from the Leadbeater video? Is this an ideological position? (Thinking about Norm Friesen's work here). What are the implications related to digital identity?
  • What do we know about what/how young people (many of our learners) share online?


Week 2 Theme: Our learners

  • What's your response to danah boyd's concept of mediated publics and related 4 properties as a portrayal of the online world?
  • If this is a fair representation? If so, what might be some of the challenges that learners face in negotiating these spaces? What's the gap between what they know and what they might need to know?
  • Digital identity in context: sometimes it is OK to share and sometimes it's not. Who decides when, where and with whom? What's our role as educators?
  • One response to the question about role: digitaltattoo.ubc.ca What might you infer about our philosophy behind the design of the site?


Week 3: Our Institutions

  • What are our rights and responsibilities as employees to participate freely and openly in online conversations about our work and interests?
  • How do our institutions facilitate or hinder this?
  • Social media, web 2.0, Patriot Act and privacy (FOIPOP) laws - what dicussions are going on in your institutions.
  • danah boyd points out (in the Conundrum of Visibility) fear is at the bottom of many negative attitudes towards the internet (in general) and social media (specifically). How might an institution reconcile the utopian ideals around sharing and innovation that can evolve from web based conversations with the fear of the "visibility" of the darkside of human nature that lives side by side with the good stuff?