Like everybody in their mid-forties I did not grow up in close contact with computers, mobile phones, or the Internet. I remember that I got my first computer – an iMac G3 – in the late nineties when I was starting university. It was around this time when I created, with the help of a friend mine, my first email account and when I got also my first mobile phone. Therefore, I am definitely not a digital native and I was convinced that it would be impossible to overcome this (digital) gap which separates me from the younger generation – until I watched David White’s video about visitors and residents. He points out that “age is not the predominant factor in a successful engagement with digital technology in the web”. Instead it is all about our motivation to engage. White proposes a framework which distinguishes between residents and visitors. Visitors are using the web like a tool-box. For example, they use Wikipedia as a first source of information before writing an article about a certain topic or they use the web for shopping and for personal banking services. By doing so they leave no digital footprints behind themselves. In contrast to the residents which are highly visible online, using, for example, social media like Instagram or Twitter to interact with other people.

In his webinar White asked us to map our use of the Internet by using his model. The following models expresses my identity online:

I would have never thought that I would be able to put to use so many of them. Especially in my professional life, the number of tools has increased since I joined the National University of Singapore (NUS) in January this year. Singapore is quite known for its use of digital technologies in different sectors, including the in education. The fact that the NUS is part of the Open Networked Learning Project and is offering the course without tuition to their staff members speaks for itself.

By joining the ONL course I hope to develop my digital literacies which can be defined following to the JISC guide (2014) as “those capabilities which fit in an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society.” In accordance to the JISC guide, digital literacy is a mix of seven elements: media literacy, communication and collaboration, career and identity management, ICT literacy, learning skills, digital scholarship, and information literacy. They are all equally important, for sure. But through the ONL course I especially hope to increase my competences in two fields: communication and collaboration and ICT literacy. Let’s start!