The first topic in
ONL was Online participation & digital
literacies. The scenario was about a person who where about to
participate in an online course. The person was nervous about writing publicly
online in a professional manner. I think it was positive that we got to process
a subject that was highly relevent to us at this moment.

In the literature for this topic we got introduced to two models for talking about digital literacy. The earlier way of viewing this was to talk about digital natives and digital immigrant . In that theory the focus was on whether you where born before or after computers where introduced in to everyday life. White, D. & Le Cornu, A. (2011) argue that even though age is a contributing factor it is not the main factor.

In my case as being
born in 1988 I can remember as a child when my family bought our first home
computer. We later got access to the internet when I was a teenager. I also got
my own cellphone as a teenager and then my first smartphone when I was in my early
twenties. So I was not born in to a digital world, but I have been following
the development since childhood.

I recognize the view
that White and Cornu takes, that age matter but that other aspects matter more.
In my family (my parents and two older brothers) we all use internet in
different ways. Not related to age but mostly to personality and hobbies.

The other theory is presented by David White in the video Visitors and Residents (part 1). White argue that we can be visitors or residents online. And that a person is not either one or the other, but can change back and forth when moving between different arenas.

I think that a certain amount of knowledge and confidence in using technology is an important starting point for using the internet in a visitor mode. But no matter how tecnically competent we are, we could be feeling more or less at home in different arenas as resident. For me I use internet in all kind of ways as visitor. If I have a question or a task I tend to turn to the internet first hand. How and when I use internet as a resident is closely connected to how I act offline. I am happy to share ideas and tips about IT software online, because that is something I know about and can fact check. I don’t feel as comfortable sharing opinions or knowledge about pedagogy on a large scale yet, eathier online or offline. On a personal level I sometimes share content on social media, but I acually don´t interact a lot. For example I like to share pictures on Instagram and to se what other people share, but I almost exlusively only ”like” posts and rarely comment. For me there is an extra effort to maintain a conversation. Maybe there could also be a distinction between publishing and interacting in the theory about Visitors and Residents.