General feedback on topic 2

Thanks to all of you for some excellent discussions about online identity. Yes it is a huge area and impossible for one person to cover everything, but I hope you agree that collectively the group has produced a variety of interesting perspectives and resources on the topic. You are allowed to be decisive though! You don’t have to agree with everything – you are very welcome to be “constructively critical”. If you’ve said you like the positive view taken in post A, and you also like the negative view taken in post B – which actually resonates most with you and why?

For more ideas on blog structure/format, check out some of these posts from the UK group (and don’t forget to credit anyone whose ideas you draw upon!)

Here are some general thoughts on “raising the bar” for topic 3 with regard to your blogs and your overall approach to the module, now that we are half way through the course:

Include your “recent posts” in a column of your blog, so it is easy for the reader to navigate between them. A “comments feed” is also a good idea, and an “About” page.

Be creative – rely less on text. For example, use pictures/diagrams/videos/embedded tweets to illustrate a point rather than a long verbal description. There is no “one best way” but learn from what you like about how other students have approached the task (once again, don’t forget to credit them!)

Make links where relevant between the various topics we are covering, to demonstrate how your understanding is developing through the module.

Some of you are making good use of twitter in terms of highlighting your posts and encouraging others to comment on them to further the debates. But you can take this further – make more strategic use of twitter by sharing resources that will be of use of others in the group and that they might not normally have access to.

I’d also like to see more engagement with people beyond the module – if you have drawn upon someone’s work in your post – tweet them a link to it and thank them. You can’t guarantee a response of course but you never know! Often these things work indirectly – you might not get the immediate benefit you were hoping for, but it all helps to boost your visibility and other connections may develop.

And don’t forget the marketing perspective – a phrase we hear a lot these days is “if a service is free, you are the product”. Think about it…!