We are pleased to announce the new workbook, which is again released under a Creative Commons Share-Alike licence so that you can take it, re-work it, and re-publish for your own use (either institutionally or personally) as long as you provide suitable attribution.

Like many other thousands of parents, I have been stuck at home with my children for the past few days thanks to slippery roads and school closures. And whilst building snowmen, sledging, and leaving huge piles of cold, wet clothes on the hallway floor for mum to trip over/tidy up/drape resignedly over an unhelpfully small number of working radiators is all good fun, after about the first 48 hours it all started to wear a bit thin for my kids (except the wet clothes thing, which never seems to get old) - and I do believe they were actually starting to miss being at school!

Naturally enough, we've heard a lot about how inconvenient school closures are for working parents, but apart from those youngsters due to sit exams this week, we hear little about how disruptive it can be for children. Which got me thinking about how the issue might be resolved without desperate parents having to risk life and limb attempting to do the school run in treacherous driving conditions. Is there not, perhaps, some scope here for digital classrooms to be set up in such circumstances; closed social networks where pupils can receive lessons, interact with fellow classmates they may have been cut off from for days on end, thus spending at least some of their snowbound days thinking about something more taxing than whether Spongebob Squarepants has the edge over Ben 10?

If the sort of severe weather we've experienced in the past few weeks is likely to become the norm in winters to come, I think it could be worth a go...

Especially an apology to our Student Ambassadors!  At the moment, for some reason I have yet to fathom, when I click on Write a new post to try and write a blog post, it is failing.  This is because it is missing out my user ID from the link it is creating.  I will try to get it fixed but in the meantime, if you are trying to blog and are not able to try adding your username on the address bar between the blog/ and the /new (e.g. mine ends with pg/blog/PatParslow/new/)

I wonder about technology sometimes :-)

A recent event on Twitter, involving Stephen Fry brings to light some of the issues involved in having a Digital Identity.  Before getting into the detail, I have to say I don't think any of the main characters involved in this spat did anything wrong, really; any fault lies with the pack mentality demonstrated by Fry's followers - and even then, although some were definitely over the top in their comments, they were, I think, acting to protect someone they admire.

Essentially, a Twitter user commented that he thought many of Fry's Twitter posts (tweets) were "boring". Unfortunately, Fry, who suffers from bipolar disorder, was at a low ebb, and took the slight personally, and said he felt he should stop using the Twitter service.  Now, if you are used to online communities, this may be a scenario which is familiar to you - I have seen it happen in most of the ones I have used.  The response from Fry's fans was predictable; they leapt to his defence, often without reading the context of what had been said, or doing any basic checks on who the 'protagonist' was.

One of the things which continued to draw fire, even after the original problem of the 'boring' slight was more or less settled in a reasonable and 'gentlemanly' way, was the use of a hashtag in the original posting.  The tag in question was #envioushomo which was deemed by many to be homophobic.  However, the original poster had reused it from someone who had used in reference to themselves, the envy being because of Fry having responded to a tweet.  The originator of #envioushomo is himself gay, and was merely expressing that he was envious about the online attention that had been given (and, I think, from reading it, in a light hearted way as is common on Twitter).  Even a brief check of the DI of the critic reveals that he, too, is gay and is unlikely to be homophobic.

Some people will be saying that this whole affair reflects badly on everyone involved.  I am not sure that I agree with that - the critic was certainly perfectly entitled to describe Fry's posts as 'boring'.  I follow Fry not because his posts are wildly exciting, but actually preceisely because they are a marvellous antidote to the celebrity culture which abounds today.  He reports on interesting things, to be sure, but doesn't hype things up, and includes some pleasant examples of his everyday life.

Fry was also perfectly entitled to respond as he did.  Everyone can have off days, when we are vulnerable to criticism, and there is no real reason why we should avoid interacting with other people just because of them.  Having suffered from depression myself, I know there have certainly been times when even mild criticism can seem overly harsh and just make me want to give up on a particular group of people.  Possibly, one might argue that you should hold off on posting anything about leaving the community - indeed some say you should just leave and be done with it.  However, that course of action does have the problem of leaving people worried about whether you are OK, and is, at best, a bit rude and lacking in consideration of others.

It may be best to say something like "That remark upset me a bit, I am going to take a break for a while and see how I feel about it later"; but if everything we do is a measured performance of our identity -a 'cynical' position, in Erving Goffman's terms (The Presentation of Self In Everyday Life, Erving Goffman, 1959) - it is relatively easy for an observer to see through the facade, which can, in itself, be damaging to reputation and image.  So, sometimes, it is better to answer 'off the cuff', and be prepared for the fact there may be some fallout afterwards.

Did any of the people who pitched in on either side do anything specifically wrong?  To some extent, I would say yes - they should have moderated language and done some basic checks on the critic.  But apart from that, is there anything wrong with going to the defence of someone you admire and like?  There is an argument that actually, yes, there can be something wrong with it, as most people really are able to look after themselves.  When one or two people are involved, it isn't too bad, but when large numbers get in on the act to 'have a go' at a perceived threat, it creates a bad atmosphere for everyone, and smacks of 'mob mentality', even though each person may well have been responding on a purely personal level.  

I had to think twice about using this as an example on the This Is Me site, mainly because I didn't want to make things any worse than they were.  But one of the things about an argument on the Web is that evidence of it will hang around, more or less, for ever.  Sure, people won't think twice about it in a couple of weeks (and many will have forgotten about it already), but some search engines will be able to bring it to light again with little effort.  Several people kept screenshots or saved some of the tweets in order to make sure the main people involved didn't miss them, which adds to the persistence of the data.  Fortunately, I think there is a positive side to this, as I have suggested. 

People will occasionally be in a bad mood, or misread something, or just take offence for any number of reasons, and intemperate things may be said (or, in the case in general on the internet, written).  The real take home lesson is one for society in general - accept that these things happen, and don't judge anyone because of them.  As long as they are brief and the parties involved come to an amicable conclusion, it is just part of life's rich tapestry.

In summary:

• You don't have to censor everything you write just because someone might be in the wrong frame of mind to accept criticism; but you should, of course, try to be polite and constructive, just as you should 'in real life'.
• You don't have to remain calm and clear when responding to a slight.  It probably helps if you do, but passion and emotion are strong motivating drives and it is a mistake to try to hold them in. 
• You should check who you are about to criticise to make sure you aren't about to make a fool of yourself.
• If you criticise someone popular, don't be surprised if a lot of people jump down your throat.  I would tend to estimate that 10% of their 'followers' will be annoyed enough to leap to their defence.
• Help society to help itself by learning that these things happen, and that there is no real point in getting too hung up about it.  Is it, for instance, really news-worthy?

Prof. Williams and I had the good fortune to be invited to run This Is Me roadshows for the new intake of PGCE students at the University of Reading last week. 

We ran a session comprising a couple of exercises and discussion.  We kicked off with a description of what we mean by Digital Identity, and then asked the students to spend some time in small groups discussing where they might find their DI.  As we were in an ICT lab, they were able to search for themselves - only a fairly small proportion had previously Googled themselves, so this was quite enlightening.

A few found references to them from the established media - sports and musical events tend to be reported in local papers, and one had an online presence after having appeared on a TV news show.  Two found traces of old social networking profiles that they had used in the past, and which they would quite like to remove, but for which they had forgotten the passwords, and were not sure whether they still had access to the email addresses which they had used when they signed up.

Our recommendation to deal with this type of problem is to be quite well organised and keep a list of which systems you have signed up for, along with the email address used.  Obviously, you should not store passwords with this list, but you also should not use the same password for different systems, so we also raised the idea of remembering a rule (or algorithm) for how to generate your passwords for each site.

Another two of our students found quite a bit of information about them which had been placed on the Web by family members, in the form of family trees.  This includes their birth date and mothers' maiden names, which may be things a bank uses as security questions.  Our advice here is to make up a false identity, with a back story, who you can use as a 'banking proxy'.  So I might make up an imaginary character called George Falladay, who was born on the 12 July 1960 and had a pet hamster called Harry, went to school at St Lula's and whose maternal grandparents had the surname Archer.  Although that seems to be quite a bunch of things to remember, as long as you set it in context, it becomes quite easy, and as nobody else can have a clue about what you have made up, it is about as secure as you can get (without making up arbitrary rules to generate this sort of information too...)

After a group discussion about where DI might be found, we had a brief introduction to the potential benefits of using your DI to promote yourself and your career, and discussed the likelihood of either future employers of looking you up online, or of the parents of children you are teaching doing so.  Our advice here includes making sure that you have a DI, because otherwise someone else's may well be taken as being yours.  And with older children, there is also the chance that one of them may decide it is entertaining to make up a DI for you.  It is better to have some control rather than none.

The last part of the session was a creative one, with the students producing a poster, game or activity to help their school children come to understand more about Digital Identity.  They came up with some excellent ideas, and there was a high level of energy throughout.

Shirley took a series of pictures of their materials, which can be found over on flickr

This site has been having some issues lately, mainly involving using a lot of memory, then running at 100% processor whilst trying to fix the memory problem itself.  The time has come to try to rectify that (actually, the time is well past due).

Today there may be some breaks in normal service while I try to rectify the problems.

There comes a time when any site will be a target for spammers.  To be honest, I have been pleasantly surprised that it has taken this long for some twit to decide to post spam on this site.  Anyway, as a result of two accounts being used to spam, I have banned both of them, and temporarily disabled registration while I consider the various alternatives for minimising the risks of offensive content being posted.

Anybody with a legitimate interest in having an ID can drop me an email (p dot parslow at (the domain name of this site without the thisisme. bit)) and I will happily create one for them :-)

This Is Me will be down for a period on Saturday, from 1 BST.  It should be back up by 18:00 BST.

This is a brief personal reflection on how I choose whether or not to form relationships with other users of social media sites.

There are two main 'triggers' for me to consider whether or not to start following someone else; both involve me doing a quick check on the individuals Digital Identity, or at least an aspect of it.  The most common is when someone decides to 'follow' me (e.g. on Twitter) or suggest we should be friends (on some other systems which only have the reciprocal relationship available).  The other form is when I am in the mood to organically grow my network, which is generally because I hve seen some activity from someone which intrigues me.

I look at their profile page, and recent activity.  If the bio is interesting, it may not matter whether they have any relevant, recent activity - I may be willing to follow for a while and see whether they say anything of interest.  Actually, I am less demanding than that - as long as they do not say anything terrible, or produce a lot of dull activity, they are likely to remain on my list.  However, they are much more likely to get followed if they are talking about the sorts of things I find interesting (which, to be fair, is a pretty long list) in a sensible and considered way.  They can also catch my attention by being witty, or by venting their frustrations as long as it is not in a crass way.

In some cases, either recent activity or bio can put me right off someone's DI, to the extent that I may block them.  I have blocked people for intolerance (of race, faith, gender, sexuality), for 'unnecessary' foul language, and for being generally irritating (trolling, being utterly dull on a repeated basis etc.).

I don't follow people just because they have followed me (on Twitter this would pollute my tweetstream so much it would be highly counter productive), even on Facebook (although, to be fair, all but two people who have invited me to be their 'friends' have been sufficiently interesting or I know them in real life, that I have accepted).

I wonder how other people make their decisions?

We ran a workshop today at the Learning Through Enquiry Alliance 2009 conference.  We used our established format, of a brief discussion about the nature of digital identity, and putting an emphasis on the positive benefits achievable through a strong Digital Identity, followed by using one of our activities.

In this case, I ran the attention game, with pairs of players forming small teams.  The pairing seemed to work quite well, with discussions between the two members of each team providing both entertainment and some quite deep reflection in some cases.  However, I am not sure that the overall impact was as good as I have seen before - the group on this occasion nearly all chose fairly low key blog post titles.

However, a few people said that it had made them reconsider their ideas about DI, and at the end of the day that is chiefly what the project is about - encouraging reflection and considered practice.