Paul Beaufait's List: Online Identities

• For my money (which usually means free), blogging provides the best venue for teaching student writing.
• This emphasis on process encourages reflection and re-thinking, doubling back on earlier posts and feedback to watch how the process of learning unfolds.
• Transparency requires being comfortable in your own skin; it requires being who you say you are; it requires a healthy openness and an equally healthy sense of privacy armed with a modicum of skepticism.
• Being truly Internet savvy in today’s world means learning how to be honest about who you are, professional in your dealings with others, and willing to learn openly from mistakes as well as from successes.

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• The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities
• All around the world, political leaders, scholars and citizens are searching for responses to the challenge of preserving control of our identities in a digital world that never forgets.
• two recent studies challenge the conventional wisdom that young people have no qualms about having their entire lives shared and preserved online forever.
• The truth is we can’t possibly control what others say or know or think about us in a world of Facebook and Google, nor can we realistically demand that others give us the deference and respect to which we think we’re entitled. On the Internet, it turns out, we’re not entitled to demand any particular respect at all, and if others don’t have the empathy necessary to forgive our missteps, or the attention spans necessary to judge us in context, there’s nothing we can do about it.
• Our character, ultimately, can’t be judged by strangers on the basis of our Facebook or Google profiles; it can be judged by only those who know us and have time to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses, face to face and in context, with insight and understanding.

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