Digital Pedagogy, Identity, Networks, & Scholarship / #digPINS Week 1

I started an online course with a group of faculty at St. Norbert College this week. The idea of the course is for the group to explore their digital literacies and digital identity to develop and inform their digital pedagogy. Here is the course methodology.

Since we are doing part of the course in our institution’s LMS, I thought I would put a little information about the weekly themes here in the open to help bring others into our conversation since exploring working in the open is a key aspect of the course. Having recently participated in #HumanMOOC which gave participants the choice to participate in an LMS or on open platforms (Twitter, Blogs, Google+) it was clear that people had a preference for working in closed or open environments. I believe that finding a balance between the two and giving some choice to students is important in education especially #highered. However, since closed is the default, students don’t often get the opportunity to try out working in the open. In order to offer them this choice I would like to give faculty more chances to do it. In addition to working in the open, participants also get the chance to develop material for their courses using what they learn from process and from others in the course both formally (examples and explanations) and informally.

There will be a few guest speakers during the month that will happen as Google Hangouts on Air and I will be putting the links to these live events on Twitter as they get closer. So far we have Robin DeRosa scheduled for January 18th at 2pm EST/4pm CST. Thanks Robin! She will be talking to us about Open Pedagogy and her use of Hypothes.is.

We might have a live Twitter chat this Friday or wait until next week depending on availability, but we will be having a long chat all week using #digpins. I will also be encouraging participants to tweet out their blog posts.

Some questions I have so far:

How much is a blog / your blog part of (your) digital identity? And what aspects of a blog make it more a part of how you present yourself?

What are essential digital literacies for interacting online? How are they different for blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc?

Week 1: Finding your digital space(s) / Readings

The World as Classroom

Scholar, google thyself

How to Maintain Your Digital Identity as an Academic