End of the course

--Originally published at Digital Identity-iTec

5790081866_3c9fae74e9_z — flickr photo by Droid Gingerbread https://flickr.com/photos/63259711@N04/5790081866 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

This is the last post related to the course iTec – Digital Identity from iWeek, so I will will write about my thoughts of the course and some things that I think that the course lacked.

In general the course was awesome, I really liked it even though it wasn’t was I expected,by saying this I mean that I thought that the course was about how to protect your information in the internet or something like that.

I never imagined that having a digital identity would have lot of advantages, what impressed me the most is that it creates opportunities and that it is not something bad like most people say. For example, I have heard a lot that you become an antisocial if you are in the internet, but the reality is other because you are actually interacting with communities and learning from them about different things, they are not with you physically but you are still trading ideas from different perspectives.

About the course itself and how the teacher taught us was in general great. I liked that he invited some experts about the course so we could ask some questions and learn from them. From my perspective, I wanted to ask questions but I didn’t know what to ask, is not because I wasn’t paying attention, sometimes I was and a acknowledge it, but something that I do when learning new things is that I organize all the information and that is when come up with some doubts, and all the new things (specially from the third day of the course) were like floating in my mind without knowing where to put them. What I means is not that what I was taught was bad but that I needed a kind of introduction from the teacher not only about what we will do in the class that day but also about what we will be discussing that day. This is why I would suggest a small introduction between 10 to 15 min (or less) before starting the session of the day.

I still learned a lot regardless of what I said above, and with that suggestion, at least in my case, I could have learned much more and get my ideas much more organized.

Why context is important

--Originally published at Digital Identity-iTec

Absolutely everything that is introduced in the digital world cannot be deleted, even if you own a web site and deleted some stuff or you posted something and deleted it right away there will be someone who took a screenshot of that before you deleted it.

En because of that many things that happens on the internet can be misinterpreted if you don’t know about the context where it was published. Many comments and opinions can be found in the internet but not all of them means exactly what it says because some are answers or feedback that are linked with past discussions and if you do not know about it you can find it weird, out of place or misunderstood it with something unsatisfactory.

The context in a post is really important because you introduce the reader to what you want to talk about and that way he would be able to send you constructive comments or feedback that can enrich the topic and get it to a different level of discussion.

What kind of user are you when using social media?

--Originally published at Digital Identity-iTec

When using the social web, there two types of interacting with it: one is the visitor and the other is the resident.

The visitor, which is the most common use, is when you use the internet as if it where a tool box, you open it and use the information to solve any problem and then you close the box and leave. In other words, is when you navigate in the internet and the social web to get information that you can use without providing something useful for the community; is not a bad thing though and the footprint you are leaving is small.

In the other hand the resident type is about leaving a bigger impact in the internet community; because is kind of difficult to explain, I’m going to put an example: When you have a blog and post about things regularly, or when you comment in other post providing something useful or when twitting or commenting on Facebook. Those are examples of using a social web as a resident type.

The resident type usually leave a stronger digital presence, and by presence a mean by how other people sense you in the social web. It has it advantages, one of them is that it creates opportunity. This happens when you find people with the same ideas and interest like you and by helping each other you can fin any kind of opportunity that can benefit you in many different ways.

Whether the user type you are, there two uses for them, one is personal and the other professional. The two concept are kind of obvious, the first ones is when you use the social media for your own purpose, for example, entertainment; and the professional is for work and probably for education.

I will leave here an interview of someone talking about how he uses and classify the social web.

Digital presence

--Originally published at Digital Identity-iTec

Digital presence or digital identity, what is the difference?

Digital identity is who do you call yourself in the internet which include the information you make visible for others, while digital presence is how do you make yourself visible for others. If you are not present in the internet there’s no way people can get information about you which is impossible, so digital presence and identity are two things the have to be together.

How do you make yourself visible in the internet?, one example is social network like Facebook, Twitter, etc. You interact with others with the internet and you also have to have an identity so other people can recognize you.

Other way to place your blueprint in the internet is with the help of blogs. In a blog you post your opinion, ideas, your thoughts or whatever you like about something in particular; is the same as when people publish their opinions on the columns of the newspaper, but instead, a post is published on the internet. People can also write opinions about what you wrote and that way you create conversations and discussion that take the topic to a new different level.

How can I start a post? For example, today in one of the iTec activities, we made a photo Safari in which we took photos about something we found interesting or about thing that could identify us. Here are some of the photos that I took:

I’m not very good taking pictures and I tried to fix some with my basic knowledge of Photoshop, and also I’m no very good with design but that is not the point here. Some of those words may be kind of cool but in the end I only cut some random words that I found interesting form a magazine and took a photo of any view that caught my eye.

That is also the way how a post is made (including this one), just write about random things that are interesting for you and will create something cool at the end, you don’t need a purpose to write blogs, what you need is only to write what you think is correct and expand that knowledge with the help of comments and discussions from other users.

There is no rule about posting, you can do it anytime, there is no deadline or restrictions that could make your post poor; the only thing that is important when writing in the internet is to make sure that you are not hurting someone feelings, or criticizing other people and things like that; just make sure that you are respecting everyone.

The reason why I learned about blogging and posting, and why I’m putting this meme at the end is because of:

Who are you in the internet?

--Originally published at Digital Identity-iTec

Who are you? and, who are you in the internet? are entirely different questions with their respective different answers.The one who you are right now in the real life is not the same one digitally speaking.

Information of what we do in real life can be easily forgotten or really hard to find, or at least that was in the past and what everyone thinks about information about themselves. In modern times, our data is public by default and private by effort; even before we are born, there actually a footprint of us in the internet because of your parents publishing your name and gender on the social network.

flickr photo by Natasha Mayers https://flickr.com/photos/natashamayers/1240736707 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

Actually is very difficult, if not impossible, to have total control and to keep private all the information you are managing, specially personal data, when surfing on the internet. There are many ways to “prevent” leaking information from you to the digital world; for example, one would be to have multiple identities in which you can give false information to interact in the social web. This way no one can use your data to do things that are not suppose to be done, specially if you are someone who is followed by many people.

But, why I wrote “prevent” between quotation marks? It’s because even if you try since being born to keep your personal information away form the internet, there will be someone or is going to happen something in which you will be taken a photo for something that will be published on the internet; it will be hard to believe but a single photo says more that only text.

Live with a digital profile is something that we cannot avoid, so is better to understand this and live with it, what we can do to “protect” (again with quotation marks because is impossible to so) our information is to change our passwords from our social networks and to be really careful with what we publish on the internet. Think twice o even a third time when you are about writing critical information about you such as bank accounts, your address, your daily routine, etc.