• Topic 2 - Exercise 3

    Posted on August 17th, 2009, 4:27 pm by admin

    Create and Record Your Online Persona

    Will you have a persistent avatar across all your social
    networks and virtual environments ? Why or why not?

    When I joined Facebook I filled in the basic information about myself. I have my family’s names etc in my information but don’t have it displayed in my profile. Mainly I decided not to include information that was personal - no addresses or phone numbers etc.  As this was to be part of the subject criteria for ICT510, I did include my educational information as at the time I thought it was relevant.

     

    I decided to place a photo of myself on my page - I have done that previously on websites etc and not had any problems with them and thought that it might help some of the other students studying 510 to put a face to the name. That is one thing I have found with distance education - you can feel isolated from others.

    I also use MSN, although the information I use on that is not as informative as that on Facebook. I have used MSN for a long time and when I joined it was very conservative about how much I identified myself. It turns out that most of my usage with MSN is also for communicating with friends and family, though and I am selective about who I “add” to my list of contacts.

    I rarely give out my personal email address. If I join a group online, or sign up to a community, I use my hotmail address. This limits my number of personal contacts and cuts down on SPAM as this is sent to the hotmail address and automatically filtered there.

    My Skype identity is also professional - I have used it for online meetings etc.  It has basic information about me and a professional portrait. I have also added a quote about learning as I feel it reflects some of my thoughts immediately to my colleagues and attempts to indicate that I do take my work seriously.

    I have already related the process I went through to create my Second Life avatar and profile. This profile has only just what was required in the way of information to create my account. My avatar slightly resembles me - the hair colour and eye colour are similar but I did take the liberty of making the rest of me look a bit trendier. Mind you there aren’t many avatar attributes that allow for the creation of a persona that reflects my age on Second Life. Does it really matter, though? I actually found some anonymity using Second Life. I could actually be anybody and tell people anything without worrying too much.

    In conclusion, my personas are different across any of the online communities I belong to. I feel that different groups, for different purposes require differing amounts of information to be included about myself that are relevant to what the group is for or trying to achieve.

     

    57 comments OLR Exercises, Topic 2

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