Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

The last thing young people want is another set of rules. But these days, social media comes with great responsibility.

When Brian Solis published his latest post “Hello, It’s nice to meet you … again: your Digital Reputation precedes you” I immediately thought of a recent experience where digital reputations did proceed people, although not in a way which gave me faith in listening to their advice. To me this underlines the very point that Brian is making, and while we know that digital reputation does matter perhaps it's time for us in the industry itself to take it more seriously and to show it a bit more respect. We see advisors with no digital reputation advising executives on their social media presence and strategy. And not only advising executives but being promoted as speakers at social media conferences as experts on social media! It's time to expose the elephant in the room and to take a stand. Otherwise we risk making a mockery of our own expertise and experience.

In a society where people publicise their status on a plethora of social media sites, US comedian Jack Vale startled individuals who had posted publically on Instagram and Twitter, sharing what he knew about them from their updates. The results of the ‘prank’ are clear to see, in that people are uncomfortable with others knowing about their life, and the reactions when faced with this in reality are interesting, and certainly worthy of exploration with students, who may not be aware that their information is accessible so easily on social networks.

An online classroom environment is very different from what you find in a traditional classroom. You communicate almost entirely in writing—and misunderstandings can happen more frequently than they do in person, because you don’t have the crutch of body language to help interpret someone’s remarks. You may feel relatively anonymous, sitting alone behind your computer screen, but you aren’t—and you shouldn’t behave that way.

Take control of your digital self in 10 (easy) steps. A quick guide for academics who want to understand social media and develop digital literacy skills. You don’t have to follow each step to move ahead, but please consider them all.

Whatever you write online stays online and is even hard to delete. Your online activities leave a trace that anyone can track so easily so we better watch out what we share. Learning about how to manage and monitor one's digital identity is one of the pre-requisites for raising responsible and good netizens.

Many job seekers have described to me that submitting a resume in today's job market is mostly a banging-their-head-against-a-wall, extremely frustrating waste of time. You want that resume to get you into an interview, but it doesn't. I think this c...

When a photo of the late Rehtaeh Parsons was used for a dating website's advertisement on Facebook last year, the callous misappropriation of her image shocked those who saw it. It should've also been seen as a warning, say privacy experts.