I read a great article yesterday – see here – about a daughter who found a new perspective on her late mum when she began using her computer.
“Her computer activity was like a breadcrumb trail through her inner life: her interests, her hopes and her plans for the future, even those that would never come true. The bookmarks in her Safari browser served as a compass on a journey into my mother’s mind.”
Kate Brannen, 2016
Apart from the rather wonderful prose, the article got me thinking about my digital footprint and literacy a bit more widely than the websites I talked about yesterday. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about this MA is the online element. It was this course that got me blogging and creating websites and I want to take my online literacy further once the final exhibition is over.
Like a lot of people I can use a computer, tablet and smartphone to navigate the Web, but know less about:
- Meta data and how to drive traffic or search more effectively than just googling
- Evaluating the reliability of online information
- Exploiting the full potential of the different online networks and community of interest platforms
- Working with platforms like Google +, LinkedIn and Twitter where I barely know what I am doing.
- Exploring other platforms I have heard about like Mashable as I have no idea what they offer.
I need to know what these offer in terms learning, engagement and content.
My Digital Footprint and measuring effectiveness
I think I am aware of my personal branding and use particular sites for particular things, but feel I have not exploited their full potential. For example, I am an active publisher in WordPress and Weebly, an active participant in sites like Flickr and Facebook and forums like Apparalyzed but more of a lurker on sites like MBClub.
Moreover while I am content with measuring engagement on sites like Facebook and WordPress via things like “friends” and “followers” I am much less sure of this in terms of twitter.
Thoughts
So whatever I do post MA, it needs to have a strong online element so I can learn about these.
Can you suggest anything?
Kate Brannen, 2016, Her secret history: I discovered my mother’s digital life after her death, The Guardian
anomiepete 