I could immediately
relate to the idea that digital literacies must be plural or that digital
literacy has many dimensions. And, again, I was very impressed by the webinar
with so many participants. Wow.

Applying
David White’s concept of a continuum between visitor/resident mode and personal/institutional
use I yield a trend of a diagonal from v/p -r/i. That seems pretty accurate to
describe my digital behavior. However, it is somewhat in contrast to my
attitude irl. I separate my work life from my private life, but not very
strictly. However, irl I am not worried to leave a personal trace. Online, I would
neither describe myself as ‘worried’. I am not too concerned with someone
tracking my likes or interests as I think it happens anyways. So, there is not
a big use in getting aggravated about it without changing anything.

Still, I
use Facebook, for instance, more as a resident than a visitor, but most of the
things I post are not my creation. I share things I agree with. Sure, this tells
something about me and reveals my opinions. I comment on posts I clearly
disagree with, with even more reveals my opinion. Yet, rarely do I take the
initiative and write longer posts from my personal perspective on Facebook.
This is in contrast to my personality irl. I am not worried to express my
opinions – even extensively if I don’t contain myself. Even more, in private
and professional life I frequently seize the initiative. So, why is that
different online? I would like to believe it is because on the internet the
audience appears anonymous. So, what is the point of communicating my ideas if
the addressee appears just random? That is, however, not even true for posts in
communities. So, why am I not interested in sharing my ideas online or in the
digital world as actively as offline?

I do not
think, I act as a completely different person online, I remain an extrovert. But
writing is not my strongest suit and I prefer to explain things in talks and
conversations. Maybe that slams the brakes on me a bit online. – Laziness to
write lengthily texts, and paragraphs, and sentences, and words, and letters
and … It might benefit those who prefer writing over talking though. It would
be interesting to explore that, actually, also in teaching.

But back to these weeks’ topic. Do I consider myself digitally literate or do I have sufficient digital competences? In my usual digital surrounding, I probably do. At least that’s what I would like to keep believing. I do not know all the tools that are out there, but professionally, I can navigate many useful tools and quickly make use of new ones. So, if I am happy with that degree of literacy, I guess that will suffice. Outside my field of life sciences or my volunteer work for first generation students, well, I am clearly not as fluent. I did already struggle with the question which search engine to use to find (scientific) literature on ‘digital literacy’ and its definition. Anyways, the ONL community has helped me out and is clearly teaching me some new tools, mostly from other fields. J But I think, I can apply quite some of these skills and tools in my field as I believe the clues and patterns of learning are broadly overlapping and independent of the content to memorize or kind of skills to practice. To start with, I will try to use zoom to discuss a project with my collaborators next week.

For my personal life, despite all this reflection, I do not know if I will change a lot in my behavior. Routine is quite strong there, probably. Maybe some subtle changes in my awareness to begin with? I will find out in the next weeks and months, I guess.