Filling in my Visitors and Residents map made me realise that I am pretty much the ultimate visitor, and it has only been my academic identity that forced me to have a visible profile on social media platforms like ResearchGate and Academia.edu, which, according to White and Le Cornu (2011) are places. Unlike tools, which White and Le Cornu (2011) describe as parts of the Internet that serve specific task-oriented functions, such as information-gathering, places are web locations that demand social presence and are identity-generating. Places are where we reside while tools are only visited, hence Visitor-Resident distinction, proposed by White and Le Cornu (2011) as a replacement of Prensky’s (2001) digital native and digital immigrants binary, is ultimately a distinction between different uses of the Web.
Places are transformative in that they make us reconsider our own identities and relationships. In fact, Amber Case (2011), an American cyber anthropologist, described this as a ‘second life’. According to Case (2011), your second self needs to be maintained in the same way you would maintain your physical self.
What’s clear to me is that I put little time and effort in maintaining my second self (i.e., updating my social media profiles and investing time in building social networks online). In fact, this blog is by far the most intense way I have ever cultivated a second self, which is why I am uneasy about pushing students into places and making them create and maintain second selves, not least because of privacy concerns that come with that.
Returning to White and Le Cornu (2011) and their distinction between tools and places, I think this binary captures well the different ways in which we engage with the Web 2.0. Of course, like any conceptual binary it needs to acknowledge the possibility of fusion, which White and Le Cornu (2011) do by noting instances where a tool may become a place if it is, for example, used to collaborate. As an alternative to Prensky’s digital natives/digital immigrants distinction, I think it is indicative of the evolution between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. Beyond that, White and Le Cornu (2011) are also right to acknowledge that technology use is not age-dependant. I constantly encounter this in the classroom where my assumption that I, as a millennial, do not need to teach my Gen Z students how to use technology is often proven wrong.
References
Case, A. [Ted Talk] (2011). Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now. [YouTube Video].
Prensky, M. (2005). ‘Digital natives, digital immigrants.’ On the Horizon, 9 (5), 1-6.
Stoerger, S. (2009). ‘The digital melting pot: Bridging the digital native-immigrant divide.’ First Monday, 14 (7).
White, D. S., & Le Cornu, A. (2011). ‘Visitors and Residents: A new typology for online engagement’. First Monday, 16 (9).
It’s good to see I’m not alone. Like you, I’d be the ultimate visitor if it wasn’t for the need to have some sort of an online presence as an academic. In fact, our VandR maps are incredibly similar. I understand that technology is important, I’m a computer scientist after all, but in my opinion, you don’t need to be a resident to benefit from it. I too am wary of “pushing students into places”, more so after unwillingly having to publish my opinion online through this assignment.
Thank you for engaging with my post. Great to see that someone was able to relate to feeling like the ‘ultimate visitor’ and my concerns about ‘pushing students into places’.
Great post reflecting upon your VandR map and critiquing the notion of online Tools and Places Elena. Good use of illustrating multimedia and engagement with relevant literature. Also nice to see that your post has sparked some peer discussion. Change often requires a catalyst and COVID19 has has certainly changed engagement with online learning in higher education (Ferdig & Pytash, 2021) and its also useful to explore what types of online places our students inhabit and which may be relevant for teaching and learning in different contexts (Bower & Vlachopoulos, 2018; Kukulska-Hulme, 2010).
Bower, M., & Vlachopoulos, P. (2018). A critical analysis of technology-enhanced learning design frameworks. British Journal of Educational Technology, 49(6), 981-997. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12668
Ferdig, R. E., & Pytash, K. E. (2021). What Teacher Educators Should Have Learned From 2020. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). https://www.learntechlib.org/p/219088/
Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2010). Mobile learning as a catalyst for change. Open Learning: The Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 25(3), 181 – 185. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2010.511945
Thanks, Thomas, for your feedback and relevant references.