This is me - Learning materials about Digital Identity

Learning materials about Digital Identity produced by the This Is Me project This project has been funded by Eduserv.

Acknowledgements

OdinLab would like to thank Eduserv for funding the project.

We thank all the staff and students at the University of Reading for their contributions and willingness to talk about Digital Identity issues. We would also like to thank the eLearning community for their critical feedback on both materials and theory.

We are also grateful to the project’s steering group, Julia Horn, Mike Roch, David Gillham, Maria Papaefthimiou, to our colleagues in the Centre for Career Management Skills, David Stanbury, and Finbar Mulholland, and to Sarah Morey, for their invaluable input and guidance.

This Is Me Activities by This Is Me1 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License2.

You are free to copy, modify, and share them. Let us know of any modifications you make - and of your experiences of using them. We are especially happy if you choose to translate them to other languages, and would really appreciate it if you would license them under the same license scheme so that the community can benefit. It would be great if you could let us have a copy of any translated versions too!

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http://thisisme.reading.ac.uk http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/uk/

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Contributors:

Pat Parslow Shirley Williams Sarah Fleming Richard Hussey

This book is available in print, and online at http://stores.lulu.com/odinlab

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Digital Identity We use the term ‘Digital Identity’ (DI) to describe the persona an individual presents across all the digital communities in which he or she is represented.

As you use more and more online services which allow user content and discussion, such as Facebook3, Bebo4, Hi55, LinkedIn6, Delicious7, Twitter8, blogs and so on, you leave a ‘digital footprint’. This ‘footprint’ is what makes up your Digital Identity – all those things which can be found out about you from the content you post, the profiles you make, the conversations you have with others and the things other people post about you.

A lot of this material remains accessible for an indefinite period – unlike a conversation in a coffee shop, what is put on the Web tends to stay on the Web. With the increasing processing power of computers, it will become easier over time to aggregate this information to build a profile of someone.

Various Web sites are already starting to do this, with varying degrees of accuracy.

What would someone who searches the Web for you find? Does it reflect the image of yourself you want to portray? If there is something about you on the Web, how would you find out about it? What does it say about somebody if they have no Web presence in today’s world? If you are responsible for others, e.g. a parent, teacher, or carer, are there any extra precautions you should take? How will ideas about Digital Identity change as the technology becomes ubiquitous?

Learning materials We have produced these learning materials to help you explore the ideas and issues surrounding the concept of Digital Identity. This book is designed as a workbook. Experience shows that a person’s view of Digital Identity changes as they become familiar with different online services, and when issues are reported in the media. It can be useful to go back and revisit how you answered the worksheets every now and then, to see how events change your view.

Where possible, learners seem to gain more from the worksheets when they have the opportunity to discuss the issues they raise in pairs or small groups. Some learners may need to be told not to share any issues which they feel sensitive about, unless with a trusted friend. The worksheet on DI and Death may need to be handled with particular sensitivity.

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http://www.facebook.com http://www.bebo.com 5 http://hi5.com 6 http://www.linkedin.com 7 http://www.delicious.com or http://del.icio.us 8 http://twitter.com 4

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Online These worksheets are also available online at http://thisisme.reading.ac.uk. We plan to have interactive versions available, which you can use as a personal record, or use in a classroom setting.

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Locking down your DI? Abhaidev is a third year undergraduate who has been enjoying student life to the full. She has a Facebook account with literally hundreds of photographs of her tagged at parties, trips to tourist attractions, holidays with friends – the usual! Abhaidev has also been studying hard, and is predicted to get a good upper second degree (2.1) – and she is applying for fast track management positions in a few companies.

As a teenager, she used various chat rooms, and found out a lot about the university she goes to from people who were happy to talk about it online. She has always been careful to avoid heated arguments online, but is aware that her cultural views have shifted since going to university. She does not necessarily see everything she said in the past as being entirely representative of her today.

She has been quite lucky in getting interviews, probably because of her dynamic and lively approach, which is reflected in her online persona. However, she rates one of the jobs she has applied for as being her ‘favourite’, and has recently heard that the company screens people’s online presence during the application process.

Abhaidev is not sure whether to ‘clean up’ her Facebook profile, to make it look more professional, or whether to acknowledge that she enjoys a party as much as the next person, and that this shows she has a character as well as those all important skills she has learned at university.

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Image by nicubunu in public domain from http://openclipart.org/media/files/nicubunu/11335

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Worksheet 1 Context: You are a third year student on the cusp of graduating. You have been using the Internet socially since you were a teenager via chatrooms, gaming and more recently Facebook. You have already secured first interviews for graduate training schemes with two large corporations (A & B), but are still waiting to hear from the one you are most interested in (C).

A friend tells you they have heard this company routinely screens potential and existing employees on the Web, but the two firms you have interviews with both have a policy to not screen them. In this worksheet, if you do not have a profile yourself, imagine you have one.

1) What might your existing Facebook profile say about you if firm C looks at it? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2) Are there any things that can be seen on your wall, or in notes you have posted which might help encourage firm C to employ you? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3) Conversely, is there anything on your profile that might put an employer off? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 4) If you were in the position of shortlisting people for interview and your company had a policy of checking candidates' DIs, how would you interpret it if it was obvious someone had just ‘cleaned up’ their profile? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 5) How would you feel if the company you wanted to work for banned use of social networking sites such as Facebook during work hours? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 6) How, on the other hand, would you feel if the company you worked for decided its staff had to use a social networking site, and to build customer relationships through it? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________

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Twittering In the ‘old days’ people used forums and bulletin boards to have conversations amongst communities.

Email can also be used for one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communications, but quickly becomes hard to follow different threads of conversation. Social networking sites opened up ways of having a many-to-many communication via people’s walls (in Facebook) and through use of groups – but Twitter popularised the idea of micro-blogging what you are doing or thinking to the whole world.

People who use it (‘Tweeple’) were quick to come up with ways of holding semi-private conversations (addressing a remark @someone) which anyone can see. It also has a means of sending ‘Direct’ (or private) messages to others.

Chas started using Twitter to communicate with some of his friends. Because he liked to chat about books, he occasionally gained a few other ‘followers’ – people who were interested in his status updates. Although Chas still feels that it is a little odd that people from around the world are interested in what he has to say, he continues to update the ‘Twitterverse’ with comments on books he has read, interspersed with occasional conversations with friends, total strangers, and the odd Tweet about his day to day life.

Chas was a little surprised when his Mum signed up to Twitter, and spent a little time wondering whether he should protect his updates. Protecting them means that people can’t read what he writes unless he gives them permission. However, in the end, he decided that although he had made some comments about books that he would have phrased differently if he had intended his Mum to read them, she is a tolerant sort of person and probably wouldn’t be bothered to read through his entire history of Tweets. Chas’ partner, Sam, however was little concerned that some of their Twitter conversation could be seen by ‘the mother-in-law’ and decided to protect their updates.

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Image by Johnny_automatic in public domain from http://openclipart.org/media/files/johnny_automatic/3253

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Worksheet 2 Context: You are an undergraduate student and you start using Twitter over a summer vacation as it was used by staff at the small company at which you had an internship. When you are back at university, you find that a number of others are also using it.

1) Thinking about these people Ali - who takes the same modules as you Bob - who takes one module with you Cat - doing the same degree course as you but in a different name Doug - a postgrad who helps with one of your tutorials Ed - a lecturer on one of your module Fi - your personal tutor Greg - your student union president Hiya - your student radio's twitter id Mum - your mother VC - your university's senior manager X - your ex-lover a) Which would you choose to follow and why? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ b) What would be your reaction if any of the above started following you? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ c) Would you expect the above to follow you if you followed them? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ 2)

How would you feel when a stranger from the other side of the world ‘follows’ you a) If they seem to have similar interests? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ b) If they appear to Tweet about completely different things? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________

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3)

Now would you Tweet about a) Your social life? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ b) Your love life? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ c) Your academic life? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________

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Where will you Tweet from a) The pub? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ b) The classroom? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ c) The supermarket queue? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ d) The library? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ e) Your room? _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________

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Banking on honesty Xian decided to delete her Facebook profile after realising that all of her banking security question answers were either directly visible on it, or easily found by following links. It was only somewhat later, when telling the tale of how hard she had found it to delete the information, that a student asked why she had given honest answers to the bank in the first place. As the student pointed out - it isn’t as though the bank checks the answers are true, you just have to remember what you told them.

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Privacy foiled by other people One chap, Henry, decided he didn’t want his real name associated with any of the Web content he had to create as part of his course, so went through the institution’s site and removed references to his name. After he had finished, he made a blog post (his account was only known by his user ID, so most people would not be able to tell who it belonged to) to say what he had done.

Unfortunately, someone else decided that they liked his name, and posted a comment on his blog saying it was a shame he was hiding it, and by mentioning it re-created the link between name and blog. This resulted in Henry deciding to remove his blog entirely.

Richard maintains separation Richard is essentially a private person, and does not maintain much of a web presence. He also practices ‘separation of concerns’ when it comes to email.

Like many people, Richard uses email to keep in touch with people in very different walks of life. He has many roles, and keeps his email accounts separate. In some cases, where he holds an ‘office’ within an organisation, the email account will eventually be passed to someone else - and this means that it is important that there is a record of the communications all in one place. In other cases, the separation helps with keeping a cognitive awareness of the different roles involved.

Richard uses two main tools for managing his email accounts, Thunderbird and Google Mail.

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Image by DooFi in public domain available at http://openclipart.org/media/files/DooFi/8564

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DI and Death Earlier this year a friend of mine died, it was very sad. Some weeks later, I realised that she was still in my Skype contacts and that really I should remove her. When you remove Skype contacts, they are shown as going into a rubbish bin and I felt, in the circumstances, that it was tasteless.

There are a number of services becoming available that allow people to lodge details of their digital presences so they can be dealt with after their demise. A recent article in the Daily Telegraph12 highlighted Legacy Locker13, where you can lodge details of accounts that can be bequeathed after your death. I’m not sure that my nearest and dearest would want to go round shutting down my accounts, so I’m not signing up.

The other side of this is there are a number of memorial sites where obituary notices can be set up.

For example, Lasting Tribute14 is linked to death notices in newspapers. There are a number of Facebook groups that are set up in memory of youngsters who have died. William Henry Bonser Lamin, born August 1887 in Awsworth Notts, to Henry and Sarah Lamin, did not have a Digital Identity when he was alive, but now he does, and he has his own blog at http://wwar1.blogspot.com/.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/5131134/Legacy-Locker-Logging-off-inpeace.html 13 https://www.legacylocker.com/ 14 http://www.lastingtribute.co.uk/

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Worksheet 3 Context: Only try this worksheet when you are feeling good about yourself, as it explores the Digital Identity that will be left after you have died.

1) Consider one social networking site you are represented on. If you were never able to update it after today, what changes would you now make? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2) Thinking of all the digital places you are on, which ones would really need to know if you have died? Consider the impact on your loved ones if a service was not told. __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3) Estimate how many years it will be before there are more than 50% of blog accounts belonging to people who are dead? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 4) It is possible to arrange for someone to update your personal sites after you have died. Do you know anyone you would trust to do this ‘properly’, and/or anyone who would want to do it for you? If you would consider this, why does the idea appeal? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________

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Name that penguin Greg is a recent graduate, now enjoying the London lifestyle since securing a job with a large Citybased company thanks to a good degree and dazzling Web profile, painstakingly crafted to sell his talents to a decent employer. In addition to the usual bright lights big city stuff of touring bars and clubs, Greg spends quite a bit of his down time gaming on the Internet, playing a wide range of browser games and Second Life.

Now that he’s a respectable working man with a (rented) flat all of his own, Greg’s older sister decides he’s responsible enough to take charge of his 10-year-old nephew Sam for a couple of days during the school holidays. Though fond of the lad, Greg finds himself at a bit of a loss to know how to entertain him for any length of time, and is relieved when Sam turns to him one evening and asks “Do you know any cool computer games Uncle Greg?”.

Mindful of the fact that a lot of the stuff he plays online is not, well, child-friendly, Greg does a quick search for something more appropriate – coming up trumps with Disney’s Club Penguin. The pair sit down to register on the site, which requires the user to register not only a user name, but create a name for the penguin avatar through which Sam will be playing. “This is cool,” says Sam, “Mum doesn’t let me play stuff on the Internet”.

Not really wanting an earful from his sister for encouraging Sam to do things he’s not allowed to at home, but also not really knowing what else to do with him, Greg decides they’ll go ahead and register anyway – particularly as the site seems well moderated with all the right sort of security measures in place.

“So,” he says to Sam, “what are we going to call this penguin?”

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Image by chovynz in public domain available at http://openclipart.org/media/files/chovynz/11921

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Worksheet 4 Context: This scenario describes the dilemma of creating a Digital Identity on behalf of someone else – in this case a minor, who may not be able to make informed choices about that identity.

Greg is clearly a technologically literate individual. He not only spends a lot of time playing online games, but has also used the Web to manage his own reputation both as a student and as a potential employee. This shows he understands the implications of having a Web presence, and the fact that Web presence is viewed and interpreted by others.

In this situation, he chooses to take on the responsibility for creating a Web presence for his young nephew, whose parent has already expressed misgivings about their child interacting on the Internet.

How he approaches the registration process for this site, and helps Sam choose a name for his persona on it – in this case a cuddly cartoon penguin – could have consequences not only for Sam as an individual, but for his family relationships as well.

Thinking about this scenario: 1) What issues are there you should think about when helping someone else to create a facet of their Digital Identity? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2) Does the creation of an avatar form a link to the user? If so, who can ‘join the dots’ to see who the person behind the avatar is? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3) Thinking back to any accounts you may have had when you were a child, does anyone still know you in terms of the identity you projected then? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 4) 4. Recent research has shown that the pattern of people you connect to, and the ways you connect, are as unique as a fingerprint. If looking at the connections Sam’s penguin makes can identify him when related to, say the friends he has on Facebook later in life, does that change any of your previous answers? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________

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Smile please When I was a child, we had a Brownie camera and we could take eight photos on each film; I now have a digital camera and can take thousands of pictures. As a child I stuck my photos in an album and showed them to family and friends, now I can post my pictures on the Internet and share them with the whole world. The photographs in which I appear that are posted somewhere on the internet certainly contribute to my Digital Identity.

On holiday with family and friends, large numbers of photos are taken throughout the trip, from the drowsy morning shots of pyjamaed individuals grasping a cup of tea, through sightseeing and lounging by the pool, to boozy evenings. I can control which of these I post, but I have less control over the ones other select to post.

A number of academic events I have attended recently have asked me to fill in a form that gives my permission for pictures to be taken and used. One had professional photographers who, it seemed, were almost everywhere capturing not only the presentations but also the coffee breaks and lunch.

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Image by rg1024 in public domain available at http://openclipart.org/media/files/rg1024/10384

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Worksheet 5 Context: Select someone who is your Facebook friend and look at photos in which they are are tagged, then below write comments you imagine the following might add to a small selection of these: 1) Their partner __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2) Their father __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3) Their cousin __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 4) A prospective employer __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 5) A co-worker __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 6) Someone they study with __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ Having tried this with someone else, now try it on photos posted featuring yourself.

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Creating a SNS profile for an internship?

Maisy is a hard working student, who is involved in campus volunteering initiatives such as mentoring local school children. She has been very involved with her sports club, and does shifts at Nightline, the student run telephone support service. As a second year, she is looking to do a year in industry to top up the funds and add extra weight to her CV. Maisy has never had time to get involved with social networks on the Internet, preferring the immediacy and dynamic nature of face-to-face conversations. She uses email and, occasionally, gets distracted by her instant messenger program when she is trying to study, but apart from that, the Internet is chiefly a resource for researching things – whether they are academic or about fashion.

One of the companies Maisy would like to work for, though, has a strong presence in one of the social networks, and has been contacting people though this medium about their plans for a year in industry.

Maisy is not sure whether she wants to get involved in this – on the one hand, she could sit down and write a profile to provide an online presence, but on the other hand, she has plenty to do, with a busy second year at university.

What is worse is that she cannot work out whether a plain and straightforward profile would actually help her in this case. It may be that it would look just a bit too ‘engineered’ and put a potential employer off. Some people expect to see a ‘back story’ behind an online persona, and it may just be too late to create one now.

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Image by Johnny_automatic in public domain available at http://openclipart.org/media/files/johnny_automatic/3883

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Worksheet 6 Context: You are a second year student interested in an industrial placement. You have avoided being drawn in to social networking sites, preferring to spend time with your friends. You have three companies that offer interesting opportunities for a year out, and you discover from one of your friends that two of them have been getting in touch with potential interns through Facebook. While you were chatting with friends over coffee, you heard that there are 20 people applying for each position within the companies, so it is going to be quite competitive.

1) What basic research would you do to try to determine whether you are more likely to be successful in your application if you have a Facebook profile? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2) If you choose to create a profile, for the purposes of enabling the companies to find you, what sort of information would you make available? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3) What do you think it says about you, if you just create the profile with your academic achievements and areas of professional interests? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 4) If you were interacting with potential employees via a social networking site, how would you see someone who had created a profile just to interact with you, or to get your attention? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________

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Closed communities David belongs to a secret society. Well, that isn’t quite true, but he plays a game in which he is a ‘spy’ and the game organisers have forums and social networks set up which can only be accessed by paying players. David gets a lot of fun out of the game, even if some of his friends think he is a bit geeky. In fact, so enjoyable is the game that around 30 of his friends in the local area also play it on a regular basis.

Many of the players are also on other, publically available, social networking sites. The game rules forbid them to mention anything about the game in public (after all, they are spies!), and generally people manage to abide by the rules.

After one of his friends was treated a bit harshly by one of the referees, who judged that their ‘character’ had been wounded whilst trying to escape from foreign agents, there was a bit of an incident on the game’s forums. The friend saw red and let the powers-that-be know about their shortcomings, occasionally in some colourful language.

Whilst David sympathised with his friend because the judgement had been unjust, the outburst made (game-related) life quite tricky for a while. Some people decided they couldn’t trust David anymore because of his friendship, and because he had defended the guy in the online forum. David had remained calm and polite throughout, but was now in a position where his friend’s reaction had had a negative impact on his own reputation. In a ‘real life’ situation, this would probably have blown over, as memories started to fade, and people gradually left the game and were replaced with new blood.

However, the persistent nature of the incident, recorded in the archives, meant that it never quite seemed to go away.

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Image by Gerald_G in public domain available from http://openclipart.org/media/files/Gerald_G/216

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Worksheet 7 Context: Imagine you are a member of a national society, which has an online presence for its members in the form of email lists. Only members of the society are allowed to join the lists, read emails coming from the list, and send emails to it. You know: Andrew - via the email list only Bill - via the email list at first but he lives close by, so you’ve met up in the pub a couple of times Cassandra - you knew before, and she was the one who encouraged you to join the society Derek - you know from University, before you joined the society Ericka - you met in the society, and then later elsewhere Frederick - you know through the society, and he lives in the same town as you Gerald - holds a position of authority in the society, although he isn’t in charge Harriet - someone you dislike You read your mail one afternoon, and one of the emails is an angry diatribe, targeting those currently in charge of the society. For each of the above people in turn, assume they were the person who sent the email.

1) How does sending the e-mail change the DI of the sender? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2) How does it change the DI of the target? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3) How does it change the DI of the society internally? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 4) What impact does it have on relationships outside of the society? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 5) How do you respond to it? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 6) What can be done to mitigate the effects? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________

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Kevin Warwick on academics and Digital Identity As a man with a high media profile and strong online presence Professor Kevin Warwick, Chair of Cybernetics at Reading University, has strong views about the need for academics to maintain a digital identity.

“I’m not sure how great the awareness among old-school academics is about the importance of having a Web presence for themselves or their university,” he says.

“Seeing how influential these can be for students and potential students – now the days of the traditional prospectus are numbered – senior academics need to be aware of the significance of the information that’s available. Students do search on particular members of staff to try to find out about who’s teaching on what, and this can influence their choices.”

For academics, a well-managed digital identity is not just an essential tool for enhancing the reputation of their institution, adds Professor Warwick, but also for enhancing their individual standing.

“If you compare two academics, one with a strong Web presence and one with their DI locked down, my impression of the latter would be that what they’ve actually done is not of any interest – because if it were, there would be more comment from other people, and they would put their work and their arguments out there for people to see. It can give you a perspective on the value of someone’s contribution.”

Erica and the aggregator Erica maintains a simple but effective online profile, which shows her professional achievements.

She updates as often as is appropriate, and makes sure it links properly to other information about her on the Web. When checking recently to see if there were any new mentions of her work which she should create links to, she was surprised to find a site which claimed to be about her. It had her email address, employer, and most of the content from her profile, but t also had links that related to somebody quite different. Moreover, as Erica never had worked as a masseuse, she was rather surprised to see a Web page that appeared to claim she had!

The problem was that the site in question trawled through countless pages, trying to find everything it could about a person, and the rules it used for deciding whether information was about her were not quite right. The company that ran the site said the easiest option was to sign up with them an edit her profile. Although this would get rid of the errors, Erica could not see any reason why she should effectively be blackmailed into joining someone’s online service (even though there was no cost).

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Mike Roch on managing your DI With 25 years in technology behind him Mike Roch, Director of IT Services at Reading University, has a great deal of insight into Digital Identity – both in terms of what it means to him, and the way it is approached by others.

With social networking, particularly Facebook, being very much the topic du jour, Mike observes that his own experience shows you can never be too careful about how you present yourself online, because that information will be around for a long time! “So much of the discussion focuses on the here and now,” he says, “but, sorry to be the old fart, to me it’s not that new.”

“It’s a new medium, but we were doing this sort of thing 25 years ago – and the evidence still exists that we were doing it 25 years ago. The persistence of this activity is something we are only coming to recognise now – there are Web sites out there whose mission it is to record all of the Internet for posterity, and actually, it’s much more accessible than just some juddering archive!”

With this in mind, he says, people should perhaps take lessons from real life when considering how to form their digital one. “A lot of people don’t think about what the audience for their postings is going to be. Yet our actual experience of life is not speak as you would be spoken to, but to speak as the audience expects or requires you to. Very few people have the luxury in life of being themselves, and having the world like it or lump it.”

Mike adds that people’s belief in the anonymity of the Internet is part of their innocence about how it really works, and can make them throw caution to the wind by telling the world and his dog about their life and exploits from the comfort of a laptop. “I do think there’s a lot of, not naivety – because that’s a loaded term – but trust and innocence about the way people use social networking, young people in particular,” he says.

“Their openness in social networking is not reflected in openness in their real lives. For example, it’s not usual when walking down the street to see what someone’s name is – even their name is private, never mind what’s going on in their relationships, or their political views.”

In fact, says Mike, the analogy of a street applies rather well to the Internet. “There are all sorts out there,” he comments, “and if you’re going to use a street safely and securely, then you tend not to make a lot of eye contact, you tend to avoid dark corners, and cross over when there are no street lights. The Internet’s got dark corners as well – and there is a level of risk, especially when there is a link between the virtual and the real.”

Setting boundaries and making yourself fully aware of these risks, concludes Mike, are key to staying in control of your Digital Identity, enabling it to work for you and hopefully not against you.

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DI and tags Nowadays we are often offered the opportunity to tag resources. In Facebook I can tag the people in a photo, on my blog I can tag a post, and on del.icio.us I can tag pages I have bookmarked.

There are a number of reasons why we choose to tag: •

For ourselves, so that we can find resources later. For example Andy may tag an article ‘toread’ to remind himself that he intends to read the article later;

•

For others, so that others know what the resource is about. For example Bo may tag a picture ‘pig’ so that others know that it is a picture of a pig;

•

For automation, so that other systems know that this resource is meant to be aggregated by them.

Recently we have worked on a project called Muvenation that involves working with teachers and virtual worlds. As the project was starting when I wrote blog posts about it I would use the tag ‘Muvenation’ so I and others would know it was about that project. When I saw Web pages that were relevant to the project I would tag them on del.icio.us and when I took relevant inworld screenshots I would post them on flickr and tag them. Thus, this Muvenation tag became part of my Digital Identity, and the resources they were linked to reflect on my Digital Identity.

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Image by dniezby in public domain available at http://openclipart.org/media/files/dniezby/3894

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Worksheet 8 Context A tag cloud is a list of tags, where the size of the tag indicates the popularity of the tag; you can often find tag clouds for individuals and for whole sites.

1) The public tag cloud can be found for delicious at http://del.icio.us/tag. Look at this cloud and select a tag that interests you, note down why you chose that tag. __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2) Clicking on the tag in the tag cloud will take you to a list of resources tagged with that tag.

On the right in a blue box is a number indicating how many people have tagged that resource. Choose a resource that looks interesting to you, note down why you chose that one. __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3) Clicking on the blue box will take you to a list of users who have bookmarked that resource, you will see their delicious user names and any other tags they used with this resource, select one of these and note why. __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 4) Click on their user name and then tags and you arrive at their tag cloud. Looking at this tag cloud, what do you think they are interested in? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ You might like to look now at a tag cloud of your own or someone you know well and see if that cloud really reflects interests.

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Check him out!

Worksheet 9 Imagine you are recruiting for a post. We are going to explore someone’s DI and see whether they present a good, bad, indifferent or rather variable ‘image’ to a would be employer. In a fit of (foolhardy) bravery, I am going to suggest you use my DI to explore, and see what issues it raises.

For the purposes of this worksheet, pick a job for which you are employing someone. It could be a Programmer, Web Designer, an Educator, an Office Administrator, a Researcher, or any other role, but obviously, my DI fits certain some types of job better than others do (and some on that list are not well supported by my DI!) 1) Use a search engine to find out basic information about ‘Pat Parslow’. How does it differ to searching for ‘Patrick Parslow’? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 2) If you have a specific set of skills in mind for the post, does including them as key words in the search provide better insights into my suitability for the role? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 3) Does a search for everything except those keywords, in conjunction with my name provide any insights or anything to worry about for you as a potential employer (e.g. if you exclude Academic by searching for ‘Pat Parslow’ -Academic on Google)? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 4) What can you find on social networking sites about me? Do these create a good impression?

How about photographs or absence of them? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ 5) Now do the same sort of searches for yourself, or for someone you care about. Is there anything in the results which makes you want to change what you find? __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________

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Activities

In addition to the worksheets, we have also found that the following games can help raise awareness of Digital Identity issues for students and staff alike. All these games use cards to help focus attention. We recommend printing and laminating these or other variations with which you come up.

Laminated cards not only last longer, but the players can write their own version of blog headlines on them.

The games typically take about half an hour to run through five rounds – more if people get ‘into’ the game and really start explaining what their blog posts are about.

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The Attention Game Title:

Theme:

Target Audience

Format

The Attention Game (pt 1)

Recognising My DI

10yrs +

Game

Learning outcomes • •

•

How headlines grab attention Whether matching content to role is important Mixed mode (synchronous/asynchronous) communications (including turn taking)

Outline Based on ‘Attention Economy: The Game’20, this simple card game focuses on obtaining the attention of readers. There are variations covered below, but the basic format is that players are given a set of laminated cards, some of which have pre-written ‘blog post titles’ (these can also be considered to be Facebook status messages or ‘Tweets’ on Twitter).

Duration: With 5 players and 5 turns, the game takes about 20 minutes in its basic form.

Resource links: Sample Cards21 Description: The game is played in turns. Each player, in turn, selects one of their headline cards to play, and lays it on the table in front of them (keep them separate from each other). If desired, players can write their own headline (using a dry marker pen so the cards are re-usable) or adds to the existing headline.

Once all the players have played a headline card, each player votes for the headline that has grabbed their attention the most - it is probably best if they cannot vote for themselves! Keep a tally on a spare blank card for each of the players.

In this form of the game there should be as many rounds as there are players - each round, a different player plays their choice of card first. It is easiest to do this by starting each new round with the next person round the table from the last starting player Add up the points each player has ‘earned’ and then award prizes for those who got the most.

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Questions to ask about the experience • What was most successful in grabbing your attention?

• If you did not get much attention, how did that make you feel?

• If someone else was getting attention, were you more likely to choose more extreme headlines?

• What do you feel your choice of headlines says about you?

• Describe your impression of the other players, based on their headlines Observations There is a tendency for people to compete for attention, which can result in fairly high-risk strategies in terms of headline wordings. Sometimes people ‘grab’ attention by building on other peoples’ previous posts.

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The Attention Game (pt 2) Title:

Theme:

Target Audience

Format

The Attention Game (pt 2)

Recognising My DI

10yrs +

Game

Learning outcomes • • • •

•

How headlines grab attention Whether matching content to role is important Mixed mode (synchronous/asynchronous) communications (including turn taking) Whether you can ‘build’ a DI reflecting an aspect of your personality How other people may view your choices

Outline Based on ‘Attention Economy: The Game’22, this simple card game focuses on obtaining the attention of readers. This version includes an element of role-playing to explore the possibilities of building a specific view of your personality for others to see.

Duration: With 5 players and 5 turns, the game takes about 20 minutes in its basic form.

Resource links: Sample Cards23 Description: Before play starts, each player chooses a ‘role’ to play. For instance, they could be a ‘party animal’, a ‘serious researcher’, a ‘dotty scientist’ (thanks to Steven Warburton for this role!), or any other role which suits the target audience age group. One of our play testers chose ‘Sex columnist’, which was fine in the context of a group of eLearning specialists, but may not be suitable for younger age groups, whilst another chose CyberGran, which could work at all ages.

Play proceeds exactly as ‘The Attention Game pt 1’ but players try to play headlines that suit their chosen role. This does not mean that all plays need to be focused solely on the specific stereotype serious researchers have been known to go to a club and have some fun too!

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Questions to ask about the experience • What was most successful in grabbing your attention?

• If you didn't get much attention, how did that make you feel?

• If someone else was getting attention, were you more likely to choose more extreme headlines?

• What do you feel your choice of headlines says about you?

• Describe your impression of the other players, based on their headlines • Does your choice of headlines reflect the role you chose?

• How do you interpret what the other players ‘blogs’ say about them?

• Looking back at the way the game went, would you change your attention grabbing strategy?

Observations Playing a role has a tendency to allow people to express opinions that are rather more radical - after all, this is ‘not them’. It can also lead to people focusing narrowly on a specific aspect of the persona they are trying to project - and there is a tendency for the result to look a little bit forced. You may find that players do not feel they can trust the DIs that have been projected by the other players as much as with the basic version.

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The Attention Game (pt 3) Title:

Theme:

Target Audience

Format

The Attention Game (pt 3)

Managing My DI

10yrs +

Game

Learning outcomes • • • • •

•

How headlines grab attention Whether matching content to role is important Mixed mode (synchronous/asynchronous) communications (including turn taking) Whether you can 'build' a DI reflecting an aspect of your personality How other people may view your choices The effect of persistence of information on your DI

Outline Based on ‘Attention Economy: The Game’24, this simple card game focuses on obtaining the attention of readers. This version adds a twist at the end.

Duration: With 5 players and 5 turns, this game takes about 30 minutes in its basic form.

Resource links: Sample Cards25 Description: This version works well combined with the role-playing option in pt 2.

Play proceeds exactly as ‘The Attention Game pt 1’. Once the total scores have been tallied, and prizes given the tables are turned by asking ‘Now look at your headlines from the perspective of an employer, potential partner or family member looking back at the things you have written to see what you are like - what sort of impression will your ‘blog’ make on them?’

You can even give a bit of a hint that things may be going to change by choosing to give a ‘tacky’ prize after the first part of the game. If you give one cheap prize to first place and two of the same to second place, there is a slight hint that maybe ‘winning’ the Attention Game is not the be-all and endall of the experience.

Questions to ask about the experience • What was most successful in grabbing your attention?

• If you did not get much attention, how did that make you feel?

• If someone else was getting attention, were you more likely to choose more extreme

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• • • •

headlines?

What do you feel your choice of headlines says about you?

Describe your impression of the other players, based on their headlines Does your choice of headlines reflect the role you chose?

How do you interpret what the other players ‘blogs’ say about them?

Looking back at the way the game went, would you change your attention grabbing strategy?

Observations The twist can run the risk with some types of people of leaving them feeling ‘cheated’ - the only defence against this is knowing your players and knowing whether it will be a problem. There seems little point in advertising the twist beforehand, although this strategy may work and it is certainly conceivable that people will still get caught up in the 'Attention grabbing' phase despite knowing that they will be judged on the overall picture later.

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