Researching a Public Figure’s Online Identity

December 6, 2017 by

Screenshot of Jazz Jennings' Twitter Profile, on November 30, 2017Inspired by Virginia Tech Libraries’ digital literacy initiative, I am sharing a series of activities that ask students to examine how digital technology shapes literacy and the ways that people interact with others in my recent posts. So far, I have posted an activity on the definitions of digital native and digital literacy and an activity on digital literacy and online identity.

This week I have a collaborative research project that students complete to learn more about how online identities work. Depending upon the depth of research you ask for, this activity will take anywhere from one to two weeks of class sessions for collaborative work and presentations.

The Assignment

In this scenario-based assignment, your group has been hired by the manager of a public figure to assess the online identity of their client. The manager wants an honest and objective presentation on the client, showing both the good and the bad. Your group will present to the manager, the public figure, and other members of the figure’s inner circle. The manager will use the information your group shares to create a plan to strengthen the client’s online reputation and improve the client’s overall reception with the public.

Step 1: Set up group collaboration rules and decide how you want to share the information that you gather with one another. You might set up a shared folder on Google Drive, for example, so that everyone can access what you find.

Step 2: Choose a public figure to investigate. For the purposes of this assignment, a public figure can be someone such as a celebrity, artist, writer, politician, public official, or industry leader. The public figure you choose must be a living person. Do not choose a fictional character, for instance. Additionally, to avoid any potential invasion of privacy, do not choose any students on campus. Be sure that you receive approval for your public figure before you proceed to the next step of the assignment.

Step 3: Create a list of the online places that your public figure has posted information or where others post information in response to or about your figure. Include the name and the link. Additionally, spend some time assessing the reputation of the sites and consider whether each site is a positive, neutral, or negative impact on the figure’s identity. Check places like the following:

  • Social media sites (like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram)
  • Professional networking and job search sites (like LinkedIn)
  • Blogging sites
  • Personal and work websites
  • Video sharing sites (like YouTube, Vine, and Vimeo)
  • Hobby or special interest sites (places where the figure might post or comment)
  • News and current event sites (that might publish stories or interviews about the figure)

Step 4: Gather evidence of the public figure’s online identity. . Consider what the person chooses to put online (personally or through a proxy) and what others put online about that person by examining and collecting information like the following:

  • the words that the figure posts
  • the images that the figure posts
  • the facts that the figure posts
  • the opinions that the figure shares
  • the products and services that the figure endorses
  • the people that the figure recommends or mentions
  • the messages that the figure shares (e.g., retweets, forwards)

Step 5: Review all the information that you have gathered. As a group, look for patterns and connections that appear among the different sites, building an online identity for the public figure you have researched. As you draw conclusions, use the journalist’s questions to think through ideas:

  • who does the figure care about, talk about, appear with, and so forth
  • what does the figure do, use, care about, and so on
  • where does the figure go, visit, stay, and so forth
  • when does the figure seem to be active (what time of day? what days of the week? any special events?)
  • why does the figure share information online (what is the purpose or goal of the online identity?)
  • how does the figure share information online (posts personally, forwards a lot of information, has a PR manager to do the work)
  • how often does the figure share information online

Step 6: Use your research and analysis to create a seven to eight minute group presentation that describes the online identity of the public figure you have examined to the manager, the public figure, and other members of the figure’s inner circle. Share the conclusions that you have drawn about the strengths and weaknesses of the public figure’s online identity, including concrete details from your research as support. Conclude your presentation with some suggestions to strengthen the public figure’s online reputation and improve their overall reception with the public.

What’s Next?

After working together to investigate someone’s online identity, students should be ready to examine their own online identities independently—and that is the topic of my next posts. I will share some specific activities that ask students to examine their online identities and consider what they can do to improve their reputation as digital natives. If you have suggestions for activities or questions about how to talk about these issues in the classroom, please leave me a comment below.

 

[Photo: Screenshot of Jazz Jennings’ Twitter Profile, taken on November 30, 2017]

This post originally published on the Bedford Bits blog.

Filed under Bedford Bits, Teaching Composition

From Digital Literacy to Online Identity

November 28, 2017 by

Social Media Remote by Animated Heaven on Flickr, used under Public DomainLast week, I shared a critical thinking activity that asked students to explore the definitions of digital native and digital literacy. With my activity this week, I ask students to consider the idea of online identity. I cover several aspects of online identity, so I will share several posts on the topic. Today’s post focuses on an activity that shifts from digital literacy to the online identity that someone builds with those literacy skills. This activity should take only one class session.

The Activity

  1. Have students review the characteristics of the terms digital native and digital literacy, which the class established during previous sessions. Make any updates or changes that students want to the characteristics.
  2. With the characteristics fresh in students’ minds, explain that the class will apply the ideas by discussing the digital literacy skills that a public figure needs today.
    NOTE: Focus the discussion on particular public figures to ensure that you can complete the discussion during one class session. Consider the public figures in the instructions below as examples. Choose other public figures if they will work better for your class.
  3. Ask students about the digital literacy skills that a state politician or the school’s president needs and why those skills are needed. Ask them to consider the role rhetorical factors play—how do the audience, purpose, and context matter in terms of the necessary digital literacy skills? Record their responses on one side of the board or similar display.
  4. Once students have the basic characteristics determined, explain that you want them to think about how the digital literacy skills they expect would change (or not) if the public figure were a digital native, recording their answers on the other side of the display. Provide a concrete example such as the student government president or a class president. Encourage students to address the same ideas that they considered for the first public figure they analyzed. If new ideas come up for the digital native public figure, have students consider whether it applies to the older public figure (and if not, why not).
  5. With details recorded for both public figures, connect the conversation to online identity. Explain generally that online identity is the personality someone builds as they use their digital literacy skills. Provide only a brief definition. Students will have a working idea of what the term online identity means. The goal here is to ask students to record their preliminary ideas about the concept in preparation of deeper analysis.
  6. Arrange students into four small groups, asking two groups to consider the state politician or school president and the other two to consider the student government president or a class president. In their small groups, ask students to brainstorm a list of artifacts that they would expect to find if they investigated their public figure’s online identity.
  7. To get them started, you can offer the guiding questions below, but indicate these are just some opening questions. Groups can add many more questions of their own to these starting points:
    • What kind of social media accounts would you expect the figure to have?
    • What sites would you expect the figure to have logins on?
    • Where would you expect the figure to post comments?
    • Where would you find photos that figure posted online?
  8. Depending upon the amount of time left in the class, students can either present their brainstormed lists, combining the ideas to create one list for the state politician or school president and the other two to consider the student government president or a class president. If you have run out of time, ask groups to turn in their lists and combine the lists before the next session.
  9. End the session by explaining that you will use these lists as a starting point for a research project on online identity that you will begin during the next class session. Ask students to continue thinking about online identity, and to jot down any additional ideas they think of to add to their lists at the beginning of the next session.

Follow-Up Activities

Depending upon your course textbook, you might ask students to read an essay about establishing identity, whether online or not. The Bedford/St. Martin’s title Acting Out Culture (4th ed, 2018) includes a chapter on “How We Identify” that offers a variety of relevant essays. If you want students to read specifically about online identity, Daniel Ruefman’s “Taking Control: Managing Your Online Identity for the Job Search” from Writing Commons frames the topic in terms that students can relate to personally.

Any Ideas to Add?

Let me hear your suggestions for talking about online identity and digital literacy in the composition classroom. Whether you have an assignment, a great reading, or another resource to share, I would love to see what you have to say. I might even feature your idea in an upcoming post!

 

[Photo: Social Media Remote by Animated Heaven on Flickr, used under Public Domain]

This post originally published on the Bedford Bits blog.

Filed under activity idea: english, Bedford Bits

What Is Digital Literacy: A Critical Thinking Activity

November 21, 2017 by

Digital Natives: An Infographic Series about Emerging Adults, from Oxford University PressVirginia Tech Libraries are embarking on a digital literacy initiative, which focuses on “support[ing] all learners in exploring, evaluating, creating, and sharing a variety of digital content, including data, information, and media.” This work matches much of the work I have been doing all along in the writing classroom when I talk about digital resources and digital composing.

 

For the next few weeks, I will share some relevant classroom activities and assignments that align with the digital literacy work on my campus. I’m starting my series with an activity that focuses on defining what it means to be a digital native and, by extension, what we mean when we talk about digital literacy. Establishing an understanding of these two terms provides the support for all the future activities in this series. Depending upon the length of your class sessions, you may break up the activity into more than one session.

 

The Activity

  1. Establish what students already know and think about the terms digital native and digital literacy. Ask students to write what they know about the terms, using whatever strategy they find most comfortable (e.g., freewriting, listing, clustering/mindmaps).
  2. Have students share their notes on the two terms in small groups, working together to identify similarities among the responses and the strongest ideas they have recorded.
  3. Ask each group to present the similarities and strongest ideas they have identified, writing notes on the board or presenting from a shared slideshow.
  4. With class input, group related ideas that have been shared, rephrasing and reducing as necessary to narrow down the list of characteristics. Identify this synthesized list as the first draft of characteristics of the terms for the class.
  5. Explain that the class will next compare the first draft to ideas that are presented in infographics about digital natives and digital literacy.
  6. Share my Digital Literacy board on Pinterest, or share your own collection of infographics. Preview each of the infographics briefly with the class. If desired, you may limit this activity to a single infographic or a small number of infographics.
  7. Assign each group a specific infographic to analyze. Alternately, allow groups to choose an infographic, first-come, first-served style.
  8. Ask students to return to their small groups and examine the infographic closely, using the following questions to guide their conversation:
    • What facts about digital literacy and/or digital natives are included in the infographic?
    • What support is given for the facts?
    • What is the source of the facts? Are the sources reputable?
    • Do you agree with the facts in the infographic? How well do they match your experience?
    • How do the facts in the infographic compare to those in the first draft that the class created?
  9. After students have discussed their infographics thoroughly, ask them to consider whether to change or add to the first draft of characteristics. Have groups identify their points generally, explaining that the whole class will decide on the specific details of changes or additions.
  10. Once small groups have finished their work, ask each group to share their infographic along with the basic points of their analysis of the infographic, relying on their answers to the questions in Step 8 to structure their presentation. Ask each group to end their presentation by explaining any changes or additions they recommend as a result of their analysis.
  11. Once the group presentations are complete, sort the changes and additions that have been suggested. Ask each small group to reconcile the relevant changes with an existing characteristic and/or to draft additional characteristics.
  12. Have groups submit their revisions and additions to you. Before the next class session, combine all the characteristics into a new draft. Make copies to distribute or create a slideshow of the revised characteristics.
  13. During the next session, pass out copies or share the slideshow with the class. Ask students to review the new draft, and as a class make any additional changes to the characteristics. Explain that this revised, new draft will be used in future activities.

Follow-Up Activities

Next week, I will share a follow-up activity that asks students to think about how their characteristics relate to the idea of online identity. If desired, however, you can use these alternative activities:

 

  • Ask students, working individually or in small groups, to create their own infographics that present one or more of the characteristics that the class has established.
  • Treat the class list of characteristics as a collection of hypotheses about digital natives and digital literacy. Have students, again individually or in small groups, research a characteristic, looking for supporting data. Ask students to prepare a formal oral presentation of their findings as well as any recommendations to change the characteristic they have investigated.
  • Have students write narrative essays that describe a specific incident from their own lives or that they have observed that relates to one of the characteristics. Students’ stories should support or refute the characteristic they focus on.

Any Ideas to Add?

I would love to hear some new ideas on discussing digital natives and digital literacy with students. Do you have ideas to share or infographics that I can add to my collection? Please leave me a comment below with the details, and come back next week for my follow-up activity that focuses on online identity.

 

 

Infographic Credit: Digital Natives: An Infographic Series about Emerging Adults, from Oxford University Press

This post originally published on the Bedford Bits blog.

Filed under activity idea: english, Bedford Bits

My 2017 #drive2cw

May 28, 2017 by

So let’s face it folks, I have some disabilities–diabetes, arthritis, and bursitis. I have trouble standing in a long buffet line or walking from a distant parking lot. I’ve always known that means no #ride2cw participation for me. I do as well as I can, but I’m not able to ride to and/or roll, run, walk around the Computers and Writing Conference.

Map showing route from Blacksburg, VA (24060) to Findlay, OHAnd that makes me a sad panda. So this year I thought, “Why not make up my own thing?” That, dear reader and potential supporter, is how #drive2cw was born.

On Tuesday, May 30, I will drive the 400 miles from Blacksburg to Findlay, and on Wednesday, May 31, I will tool around Findlay between meetings. During these two days, I will document my travels for those who contribute to GRN fundraising in these ways:

  • For every $100 donated to GRN, I pledge to post one Instagram photo (@tengrrl) highlighting a remarkable* aspect of my travels on May 30 and 31. Note that remarkability is completely up to my discretion and will likely involve photos from Love’s Truck Stop, Sheetz, and the McDonald’s drive-thru.
  • For every $1000 donated to GRN, I pledge to post a video related to my travels on May 30 and 31. The video(s) may be Facebook Live videos if conditions allow, but there are no promises. Those of you who watched my riveting Facebook Live video on the way to CWPA last July know what to expect.
  • If the $3000 goal for donations to GRN is met, I pledge to do something spectacular that I haven’t quite figured out yet (suggestions welcome).

Note that the pledged materials may not be posted immediately, since texting while driving is a really bad idea.

To partake of this excitement, you should donate to GRN, and then

Filed under #cwcon

Memes and Protest Posters

February 7, 2017 by

Women's March, January 21 2017, Chicago, by Jonathan Eyler-Werve on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 licenseHow do the current political posters (say like at the women’s march) compare to political protest posters from another time period (let’s say the 60s)? I’m wondering if the rhetoric and content of image-based memes is influencing the phrasing and content of today’s posters.

Take that Grumpy cat poster, for instance. It’s building on the Grumpy Cat meme, of course. And it’s obviously referring to the Billy Bush tapes and Trump’s suggestion to “grab them by the pussy.” There were surely pop culture references in the protest posters of the past, but did they incorporate memes as this one does?

 
 

[Photo credit: Women's March, January 21 2017, Chicago, by Jonathan Eyler-Werve on Flickr, used under a CC-BY 2.0 license]

Filed under 10-minute ideas

CWPA 2016 Presentations

July 16, 2016 by

“Using the WPA Outcomes Statement to Support Innovation in Meeting Discourse Outcomes for a General Education Curriculum.” Sheraton Hotel, Raleigh, NC. 15 July 2016.

[gdoc link=”https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TCxsGL5MvS31MPHSnszr_pfk6ES3BlWN6XMObWb8BMQ/edit?usp=sharing” height=”800″]

 

“Toward a Programmatic Assessment Model for Multimodal Projects.” Sheraton Hotel, Raleigh, NC. 16 July 2016.

[gdoc link=”https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1P3jM4c5wI8GyLo5EdnOeyym8HtyAlDkpGEXECyt7U8Q/edit?usp=sharing” height=”800″]

Filed under Journal

Writing on Eggshells

June 28, 2016 by

shellsDamn the uncomfortable readers. It’s time to start writing again.

Some time ago, more than a decade, I wrote on this blog all the time. There were daily updates on what I was writing, links to things that I found, stories about my crazy dreams, and varied random ramblings. Some of those posts are harder to find because I made some dumb decisions about post titles, and I haven’t fixed them all (it’s on my to-do list). The point is that they are there.

I said what I thought, talked about the things I was working on, and described what was going on each day. When I was sad and depressed, I talked about it. I have dysthymic depression, social anxiety, and have had issues with major depression a few times. I didn’t put the names to what I was going through, but I talked about being overwhelmed and sad and scared and anxious.

And that was the problem. My posts made some people uncomfortable. Someone came to me and told me that I shouldn’t write everything I feel because I was “making everyone feel like they were walking on eggshells around me.” I could write about what I was working on, but I was told not to write about being sad or depressed or anxious.

So I stopped writing. I’m a black-and-white thinker, so it was my standard response. I let the uncomfortable readers silence me.

Eventually, I started posting news links. If you check the archives, there are years where nearly every post is a summary of the links I have posted to Twitter about educational news and writing resources.

I wanted to write and post more, but there were people worried about walking on eggshells always in my thoughts. So I said nothing for a very long time. And now, I am going to start writing again. I’m going to say what I want. I’m not sure what has made me brave enough to talk again. Perhaps it’s that I started taking antidepressants again in November after six years without them (when I couldn’t afford them at $800/month). Maybe it’s that I am teaching again. Maybe I just feel like a writer again.

Part of it is that I finally figured out how to move all those news posts to their own page and take back the blog’s homepage. That’s what I am going to do: take back my writing space and say what I want. I will no longer worry about my readers. I will write on those eggshells and post what I want. Here’s to writing whatever I want to say whenever I want to say it.

Filed under Blog

Revising the Resources List on My Syllabus

June 8, 2016 by

Stack O' Books by Kurtis Garbutt, on FlickrThis week’s post on Bedford Bits describes the work I have begun on revising my course documents to make them more visual. The ultimate goal is to make them more engaging and more useful to students.

I started with the required resources, which has been nothing but a glorified book list for as long as I can remember. My revised version still lists books, but I have tried to add some negative space and color to make it easier to read and a bit more friendly.

Read the full details in the blog post on the Macmillan Community site.

 
Image: Stack O' Books by Kurtis Garbutt, on Flickr

Filed under Bedford Bits, Teaching Composition Tagged with , ,

Connecting Selber and Halliday

June 7, 2016 by

Cover of Selber's Multiliteracies for a Digital AgeEver since I looked at the review of Stuart Selber’s Multiliteracies for a Digital Age in Composition Forum 14.2 (Courtesy of a tip from Bradley Dilger), I have been reflecting on my notes about M. A. K. Halliday’s literacy engagements.

I have a pile of old notes on how I thought Halliday might be used to understand technology engagement from my time at ReadWriteThink when the site used Halliday to structure the site.

Halliday’s literacy engagement system (learning language, learning about language, learning through language) parallels Selber’s. There are nuances that would need worked out, but generally I think I could argue that literacy learning follows the same kinds of meaning making, even when the kinds of literacy are different. I’m just not sure that matters as an observation. What does that knowledge really bring to the conversations and scholarship on literacy?

Filed under Blog, Teaching with Digital Tools

The Harm We Can Do

June 3, 2016 by

Pinocchio by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier, on FlickrSara Kadjer shared “Can Reading Logs Ruin Reading for Kids?” from The Atlantic. The piece dredged up some memories for me, good and bad.

I guess I am an oddity, but I always loved tracking what I read when I was in school. Reading doesn’t really come with a tangible thing to point to when you’re done, and those logs let me say, “Look, I did all this!”

I know there are problems with the pedagogy when tracking takes away from the joy of reading. It made me recall Troy Hicks’ recent blog post on the troubling need to quantify everything students do.

That leads me to my bad memory. On the first day of class in 9th grade, the teacher asked us to write down all the things we read over the summer. I busied myself with a list in categories: mysteries, biographies, historical fiction, and so forth. I had to think in categories to remember them all. As I scribbled titles down, the teacher moved through the classroom. She paused at my desk, and I expected her to be impressed with the list of all the things I had read. Unfortunately, she instead announced to the full class that I had to be lying because no one read that many different books.

I try to remember that moment to remind myself that the long-term harm of my comments as a teacher can last forever. After all, I was in 9th grade a very, very long time ago; and I still remember that moment of shame very well.

 
Image: Pinocchio by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier, on Flickr, used under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

Filed under Blog

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