Lessons on Digital Identity

  1. In order to create a strong digital identity, you must create a personal brand- you must be aware of and in control of your brand by defining your values and characteristics.

2. Just about everything we do online can be traced, which contributes to our digital identity.

3. In today’s world, it is virtually impossible to not have a digital identity. Even if you actively try to not leave a digital footprint, you are bound to leave one somewhere without even realizing.

4. Today, even children need to be conscious about their online activities-digital footprints start from a young age. Even games that kids play online can leave a digital footprint.

5. “Google never forgets.” Every action you take online is like a permanent record. It is important to think long and hard before posting anything online because it can be traced. Ultimately, this could have a negative affect on your career and reputation if you are not careful.

Digital Identity, or, I blog therefore I am

The first blog I read was “Personal Branding in the Age of Google.” Naturally I immediately googled my name.

I was disappointed.

I found that I could be an actor, felon, or possibly British. Since none of those were correct I added more details like my state of residence, middle initial, and finally my middle name.

As it turns out, I pop up on two websites; the first is a birth records index from California, and the second is my dearly departed grandmother’s genealogy project from 2003.

In other words, lesson 1, I don’t really exist.

The second article explained why this wasn’t such a bad thing.

“Controlling Your Public Appearance” affirmed that the lack of information was due primarily to how I’ve managed my digital presence over the last few years. My facebook is on lockdown, twitter is hardly used, and my ancient myspace, if it currently exists at all, was at least somewhat tasteful. Lesson 2, you have the (modest) power to be a nonentity.

If, someday, my facebook became a matter of public knowledge, I can rest assured that the only new information anyone will figure out (aside from that already available through my two search results) is that I have liberal leanings. That is (currently) not a crime, nor is it (currently) a bar to participating in public life. Lesson 3, some things are best left unsaid.

The “Digital Tattoo” was fun and interesting, but I need to put up two more lessons so here goes. Lesson 4, there’s no right way to exist digitally. There’s not really a wrong way either. Sending your account information to a Nigerian Prince or trusting a bombshell blonde you just met on facebook with your social security number are outright dumb, and dumb things are generally bad, but just as bad is refusing to exist digitally at all. This thought leads me to lesson 5; badges, likes, and upvotes are the cheapest way to get people to reveal things about themselves that they normally wouldn’t mention. Want an honest assessment of a person’s internet habits? Make a quiz and hand out badges, it’s like gold stars for first graders but it’s cheaper and gets more results.

5 Lessons I’ve Learned About Digital Identity

Back in my Sophomore year, I made a rather early “rough draft” for my Digital Portfolio as part of my final grade for Into to Digital Studies. It doesn’t look that great right now, but I’m sure it will look a lot better once I sit down and work on it for a good amount of time and incorporate what I learned from the three websites that I looked at to learn about Digital Identity.

The first lesson that I learned involved advertising your work. Looking at the Professor McClurken’s site, I noticed that he has listed probably everything that he was involved with directly on the homepage and even the side menu. Doing this is rather important for your Digital Identity. Whenever someone stumbles across your name online and end up at your website, they can easily learn more about you and contributions online. It could even lead them to collaborate with you if they have similar interests and arguments as you.

However, in order for them to collaborate with you they need  some contact information. That is the second lesson I learned from browsing the websites. You don’t need to put your phone number, but your e-mail is a must and possibly your Twitter and Facebook if you don’t mind future colleagues looking at them. If you didn’t list any online contact information then how would one expand their Digital Identity?

To continue on the thought of social media being viewed by your boss, another lesson to keep in mind is linking to profiles that you want others to view and have your personal accounts private. It’s best to keep in mind that you shouldn’t post anything that could ruin the Digital Identity that you’ve already worked hard on while using those public accounts. One wrong post could ruin everything and there really isn’t a way to start over since once something is posted online, even if it is later deleted, it still can be found online.

If still don’t want to risk using your social media then one of the last lessons should cover that. When making your Digital Portfolio, you should include a short biography informing the viewer about yourself and how you contribute online. Not everyone that ends up on your site will know you, so why not tell them about you? A bio helps them learn about you and understand why you are involved in certain topics. For example, if I blog online about privacy issues and someone decides to check out my website, I would have a bio that mentions how I am in the Digital Studies field and how I’ve worked on projects involving privacy before.

One final lesson that I learned from viewing McClurken’s site, Fleshing Out the Digital Selves in Practice article, and the Controlling Your Public Appearance article. would be keeping your Digital Portfolio simple. You don’t want to startle or scare away potential followers by having crazy colors and a wacky background, unless your online identity is wacky and crazy. What you really want is to have the tone of your website match with the tone of your online persona. If they didn’t match, there would be confusion and possible negative feedback towards you and your works.

The Importance of Digital Indentity

I already had some familiarity with looking at digital identity constructively. In a project I did recently in another class I examined blogging and as a piece of that I looked at the way Mary Washington students and staff, as well as others shape their digital identities. This exercise pushed those thoughts I have already been forming further into understanding digital identity.

1 Digital Identity needs to start young

I’ve heard it before but in Will Richardson’s article,“Footprints in a Digital Age”,  he put it blatantly that he worried about his young children’s digital identity. I’ve always thought that collage age and up is when people really start structuring their digital identities purposefully it surprised me that we should think about from early childhood.

 

2 With the internet people can find anything

In the Wired article about Evan Ratliff I was surprised just how much information people could find on him. The collective “everyone” always tells you to be careful what you have online because it can always been found however I never understood how deeply this “everything” went. (How do you find someones cat sitter for instance?)

 

3 Google has the power

The majority of the time when someone goes to look you up they plug your name into Google and see what comes up. This is a continual process that I have been a part of too. When I got my random college roommate freshman year the first thing I did was google her and was concerned because I found almost nothing. The blog post, Personal branding in the age of Google reaffirmed this feeling. When you want to hire someone you Google them whatever comes up gives you an instant opinion of a person.

 

4 It is important (and necessary) to build networks

In “Footprints in a Digital Age” there is a discussion about how not only are networks important but the way we shape them as well. I particularly felt that the concept of creating a network that challenges you to grow and gives you other view points was an important point. It can be easy to form a comfortable network of praise online but listening to opposition can be productive in some ways.

 

5 Control over your digital identity is important.

Prior to this assignment I had already come to this conclusion through the other articles and discussions I have had with people.  The articles however served to further confirm my opinion. How you use digital identity and how others perceive you is important. It gives potential employers and total strangers a snapshot into who you are and making sure you are the author of that image is increasingly important.

Week 7: Update

Although the snow day last week meant that we lost scanning time we officially only have one more diary to scan. My group and I are excited that the scanning process is almost done and Mrs. Chase has helped us alot throughout the process. I have scanned thirty pages of the last diary and we have started converting the tiffs into pdfs and jpgs. I have also started doing research on events that occurred during the periods Gordon wrote the diaries to include in the timeline. We were having a little trouble getting TimelineJS to show up correctly on our website but I think we have fixed it. We are also starting to setup our website and will begin to enter the diaries as items with their metadata soon. I have also begun looking for Civil War images of Fredericksburg to include in our project on the timeline or in the summery of the Civil War in Fredericksburg.

I feel like our group is doing good and keeping on track. The scanning took a little longer then we expected due to us missing a day and since we all have to use the same machine only one person can scan at a time. I think we are back on track and our next step is to start getting things uploaded to our website. Have a great break everyone!

Limitations of the UMW 3D Laser Scanners

So far the process of 3D laser scanning has been one of my group’s greatest challenges. We met with our technical support a couple of times to learn about the different laser scanners and how to use them. Feeling confident that we could successfully scan the objects, we arranged for the museum curator to bring the bicorne hat and the wedding shoe to UMW for us to scan last week. We tried to scan the shoe first and found that the laser scanner could not distinguish between the black heel and the black rotating platform of the scanner. Then we tried to raise the height of shoe by setting it  on a book covered with a piece of paper. The scan successfully captured the form of the shoe, but it did not apply color, resulting in a lumpy gray object. We found out that neither of the rotating scanners apply color, despite that being one of the requirements we listed when we were learning about the scanners.

Yesterday we decided to try to scan the hat at the James Monroe Museum. Initially, we were going to try to use the Xbox Kinect laser scanner. However, first we had problems connecting to the museum’s internet, and then we were unable to get the computer program to recognize the scanner. We ultimately decided to place the hat and its mount on top of a stool to enable us to scan it with the Structure Sensor scanner on the iPad. The base of the hat’s mount reflected light, so the scanner was unable to focus on the hat. Fortunately, we were able to cover the base with paper, allowing us to scan the hat. We found that the Structure Sensor was able to capture the hat’s form and overall color pattern. However, it was not able to scan a deep crevice created by the brim, resulting in a hole in the 3D image. The Structure Sensor was limited in that the image must be scanned at once and cannot be edited or stitched together with another image. Finally, we also had problems getting the file from the iPad because it had to be emailed and the iPad was not connected to the internet.

Hopefully we will be able to find out how to successfully use the Xbox Kinect scanner or be able to check out the school’s laptop since internet access is problematic for the iPad at the museum. We could also try to bring the objects to UMW where we could use either scanner, although it is difficult to find times that work for both the curator and the scanning expert when the room the scanners are in is not occupied.

Mid-Point

Well, we’re about at the mid-point for the semester so far. In regards to my group’s project, I feel quite good about how it is going so far. We have been clearing all of our self-set milestones and deadlines so far, and we are all doing quite well with our own particular section of the work. The next milestones in our immediate future are doing some video work, which Kathleen and myself will be doing, and completing the task of reading through all of the letters. As I have typed up existing (handwritten) transcriptions of the Slaughter letters, I have already read through those letters in some detail. The Slaughter letters do present one potential difficulty going forward; they’re nearly all to Mayor Slaughter, rather than from him. We were planning to do some audio recordings of the letters, but the lack of letters actually from Slaughter makes this project somewhat problematic, at least in regards to Slaughter in particular. That future difficulty aside however, we are making good progress.

Halfway there

It is the halfway point in the semester and it is time to talk about where the group is with the letters.  Everything seems to be going well right now; we have a website, the letters have been scanned and transcribed (as best as they can be, some words are difficult to make out) and the group is well on schedule to being done.  At this point, all that is left is to actually put the letters on the website and anything extra we may want to do.  Before uploading the letters though, we are waiting on approval to use the Omeka plugins we requested which would make formatting a lot easier.  Without these plugins, it is possible that a single uploaded item in the wrong order could mess up the entire site later on so the sooner we get permission, the sooner we can upload everything with confidence.

Our future plans, aside from the letters themselves, are to create a front page, put up pictures of Slaughter and Murray’s belongings and Slaughter’s gravestone, and record readings of Slaughter’s letters.  Recording Murray’s letters may be difficult as many of his letters are missing various words.  Moving forward, our group plans to continue to do our best and we should have everything finished by May/late April.

First Milestone

Our first group milestone fell on Tuesday (2/23) of this week and it stated that we would have all the Slaughter and Murray letters as well as their transcriptions scanned.  We successfully completed all the scanning, but we do still have 3-4 of Murray’s letters left to transcribe because we thought the transcriptions of all the documents had been provided by the National Park Service (NPS).  This issue just recently came up and I emailed Luisa Dispenzirie.  It was not known until this morning that a few letters had actually not been transcribed.  Nonetheless, this can easily be corrected and the transcriptions completed quickly as the letters themselves are fairly short.  Another issue with the letters and transcriptions is that 2-3 of them seem to have catalog numbers penciled on them that do not match the spreadsheet we received from the NPS.  But Suzanne Chase said not to worry about this because cataloging errors are always common and usually an easy fix.  The next task with the letters is to read through them all, but this milestone does not come for a couple weeks yet.

The next milestone falls on March 4, which is next Friday.  By that day, Breck and I will have visited and filmed Slaughter’s grave in the Confederate Cemetery downtown as well as Murray’s belongings on display at the Fredericksburg Visitor Center for the introductory video to be placed on our website.

Project Update

At this point, my group has our website created, as well as four interviews set up with faculty/staff involved in the HCC, for the week after Spring Break. The first of these  meetings is with President Hurley. Personally, I am very much looking forward to speaking with him. I think he will provide a great perspective on the building that we may not have had otherwise. We plan to ask him about his involvement in the building, as well as what it means to him having the building being renamed after him. I can’t wait to hear what he has to say. Hopefully, after the four interviews we now have set up, we will have enough information to begin working on the timeline for our website. We can continue to add to it as we conduct further interviews. It s exciting to see the planning of our project start to form into action. My group also went on a walkthrough of the building with the Building Manager of the HCC, and all of us learned many capabilities and features of the building that we never knew about.

Tomorrow in class, we will present to the class where we are with our project so far, where it is going, technical issues we have run into, and challenges we have faced. I look forward to hearing where other groups are with their projects.

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