What's involved in being an identity online, and what new literacies are required to thrive in this new ethos? What does it mean to be a teacher AND a learner all at once, and how does education shift when we think of it as a participatory activity?

1. Networked Educators & Learners
Who Are We Now That We’re Online?
Bonnie Stewart
@bonstewart
University of Prince Edward Island
EdMedia 2013
hp://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/5066287053

2. Identities

3. Education = Multiple axes of
change
knowledge scarcity
knowledge abundance
open
public funding
markets
closed

4. Increasing pressure to go online

5. Online is not just about new tools,
but new literacies
hp://www.flickr.com/photos/rofi/2647699204/

6. Participatory culture = new ethos
“Paradigm cases of new literacies have
both new “technical stuff” (digitality) and
new “ethos stuff”…what is central to new
literacies is not the fact that we can now
“look up information online” or write essays
using a word processor rather than a pen…
but rather, that they mobilize very different
kinds of values and priorities and
sensibilities.”
- Knobel Lankshear (2007)

7. Differing sensibilities legitimacy
practices
Institutions Networks
product-focused process-focused
mastery participation
bounded by time/space always accessible
hierarchical ties peer-to-peer ties
plagiarism crowdsourcing
authority in role authority in reputation
audience = teacher audience = world

8. Identities for a new ethos:
open, public learner/educators

9. So who are we when we’re
online?

10. Ourselves.
With some new affordances.
And some new concerns.

11. The Performative Self

12. Bring identity into being:
lather, rinse, repeat

13. The Quantified Self

14. The Asynchronous Self
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vylen/6158720720/

15. What people say about you is
persistent, replicable, scalable
searchable

16. The Surveilled Self
“The internet is on principle a system that
you reveal yourself to in order to fully enjoy,
which differentiates it from, say, a music
player. It is a TV that watches you.”
- Edward Snowden, in The Washington Post

17. The “Me, Inc.” Self
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/4880623547

18. Coping with the new ethos
involves a new
relationship to the concept of
control.

19. The Digital = a Reputational Economy
hp://www.flickr.com/photos/8113246@N02/7932198032

20. Always Faceted
hp://www.flickr.com/photos/thelotuscarroll/6842167375/

21. Always Hybrid

22. Always Public
Networked Publics:
• Multiple, overlapping, global networks
• Always accessible
• Identities are visible, traceable searchable
• Different audiences all in plain sight

23. …that awkward moment when you remember
you friended your grandma on Facebook.
Or that your students – or your VP, or your new
boss – follow you on Twitter.
Context Collapse

24. Always Sharing
hp://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanr/142455033/

25. Always Fluid

26. A networked education…
l Connects
l Cultivates
l Curates
hp://www.flickr.com/photos/gforsythe/7153872159/

27. …but cannot
control or count
in the same ways as
institutional models of education

28. There are many currencies in
online networks

29. Benefits as learner scholar:
access, engagement, profile

30. Benefits as teacher:
opportunities to connect
convey info in new media

31. Benefits as writer:
real audiences

32. Benefits as thinker:
emergent, choral conversation

33. Identity profiles + participation
=
new possibilities for a new ethos

34. Thank you.
@bonstewart