Topic 1- Reflective Summary
Before starting this topic on digital residents and digital visitors, I decided to read White’s (2011) Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement. journal to gain an insight on what these terms meant and how they are relevant in today’s world in order for me to translate this onto my blog. I did at first find it difficult to distinguish the differences between White’s (2011) typology against that of Prensky’s (2001) notion of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”. However by putting the word “digital” aside and focusing on the other key words, (visitors, residents, natives and immigrants), this allowed me to logically understand the terms better, as well as how they’ve deviated from one another as years have gone by.
Luckily for me, as I began to familiarise myself with the topic, this stimulated my mind. I was able to conclude that in my experience, I would say I was both a digital resident and visitor, since although I used social media practically every day, I did use the web for other goals and tasks. Directly relating this topic to how I live and work on the web therefore made Topic 1 very interesting in my opinion, since these were thoughts I had never made prior. In further readings, regarding blog posts from peers on the UOSM2008 module for this topic, I could see that many of us could relate. Leigh Ravenhill for instance spoke about a “visitor mode”. A behaviour which I see myself steering towards at times. A prime example would be when I was purchasing a smoothie maker. I made it a priority to read reviews on its functionality and overall performance to convince me whether or not to purchase it, in which I later did after reading good reviews.
Overall, I’ve learnt that, in times of difficulty I shouldn’t only limit myself to one resource (Whites (2011) journal), which I did in this instance. Though I got there in the end in terms of my overall blog post, for future blog posts I will aim to branch out on my research. This may allow me to discover more unique concepts or more simply give me greater understanding of the topic. Nonetheless, most importantly to read more of what my other peers thought about this topic in their post, to not only discover who mentioned similar things to me, but possibly others who may have had completely different views.
References
Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement | White | First Monday. 2015.Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement | White | First Monday. [ONLINE] Available at:http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3171/3049%20https://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~tefko/Courses/Zadar/Readings/Selwyn%20dig%20natives,%20Aslib%20Proceedings%202009.pdf. [Accessed 08 February 2015].
