Identity

My Time Machine

/ Cole Camplese / 6 Comments

For one reason or another Twitter has come back into the center of my digital life in a big way. I know it started at ELI 2008 in San Antonio. There were so many people that I try to follow at the event who were sitting in sessions sharing thoughts that I decided it was the best (only) way to keep up. It has sort of brought back the feeling of being connected to both the larger education technology community and the one right around the corner here at PSU. Another big factor has been teaching this semester and seeing my students showing up in my Twitter stream … I have to admit I am getting to know the students in my class who are twittering on a regular basis a little better — not sure if “better” is the right word, but they are quickly becoming a component of my Twitter community and I am a little more tuned into what they are thinking about.

With my interest in Twitter returning I find myself updating on regular basis again … I enjoy the renewed feeling of connectedness. I did something this morning as I was reading a particularly refreshing post from one of my students — I set out to find my first Tweets and blog posts about the service. I am not sure if Twitter was intended to be used as a personal content management system of sorts in the way I use my blog and my old fashioned analog journal, but with the frequency of Twittering I was doing a year ago it is obvious it is a great way to look into the past. So I did just that and turned up what I was doing at this exact moment a year ago. I was also able to read through my Twitter tagged blog posts and see that we were thinking about some interesting uses of Twitter way back in the day (last year) that I’ve seen put into use at conferences, events, and by organizations. When I asked Twitter what I was doing literally last year at this moment it was able to tell me … not as easy to search as the blog, but the results turned up the following:

twitter_timemachine1.png

So I am feeling like it is more important than ever to keep the thinking moving forward and to keep documenting what is going on in my day-to-day life. As with blogging, I feel almost like I am leaving little anthropological records of my own thinking for my own reflection in the future … so I’m sorry if I tweet about things that seem odd, disconnected, and even irrelevant, but most of it (when looked at from a meta level) gives me solid insight into my own thought development. I’ve been saying it for a while now, but it is becoming very clear to me that all of my online identities are coming together to form not only my self in the present progressive sense, but also as a sort of time machine for me to return to the thinking that is forming my research, my organization, my thinking, my relationships, and so on. In essence, Twitter is always asking me to respond to the simple question of “What are you doing” when I am now seeing it as an amazing opportunity to travel into the past to understand the answer to that question in a more reflective and holistic sense.

Something is Changing

/ Cole Camplese / 4 Comments

I say that only because it is true … last night after reading about the horrific behavior aimed at Kathy Sierra my wife and I had a long conversation about this whole transparent life thing.

Let me set this up just a bit … I have been blogging since sometime in early 2003 in one form or another. I didn’t really get into it until 2004 with the launch of Learning and Innovation, but I had been writing here and there for a year until I really got committed to it a few years ago. My wife has also been a blogger for several years … she spent about a year on a blog that focused on how women (Mother’s particularly) are often caught in the middle of their careers, families, political beliefs, and just about everything else. She got big traffic for the year or so she kept it alive. After the Bush/Kerry election she lost her energy to fight that fight — that was coupled and compounded with some particularly nasty comments from one person. A few months later she launched another blog that has grown in popularity and has made a significant impact to many people. She is a great writer who is funny and passionate … it is a good voice in the blogosphere. Both of us enjoy doing what we do, but things are changing … having a voice that is heard is a good thing even if it is not as loud or as popular as Kathy Sierra — it can still provide impact.

You’ll remember that a couple of months ago we decided to pull our pictures from the public eye at Flickr. What I thought was a small decision spurred a lot of email and comments from people asking me deeper questions. Some of the more interesting comments focused on me never thinking about giving my children a say in how I was shaping their public identity through my open use of Flickr. Really got me thinking. I very rarely write here about my children in any real way — I mention them, but rarely do I air thoughts and observations about their development or actions. I know there are sites like the wildly popular Dooce where it is all chronicled with minuet detail. I don’t point at Heather Armstrong and say anything negative at all. Hell I read Dooce and find it very entertaining. But, I made the choice early on that this space was for the things I think about in my work space. The identity I am working to create for myself online is based on that environment — not home. The thinking hasn’t stopped with regard to creating online identity and what it means … if nothing else, the Kathy Sierra story pulled the thoughts back into focus a bit.

Back to the conversation with my wife … we talked about a lot of things. One of them was how both of our use of RSS has dipped way down on the charts. It is funny how all of a sudden I am back at reading a couple of sites for “real.” I visit the NY Times, ESPN, and a few other sites everyday … I have only ten or so that I am spending time at in my RSS reader … a far cry from the 150 subscriptions I have. Just strange. Both of us have noticed it and expressed feeling overwhelmed or even bored by the whole thing. Problem is that there is great stuff out there that neither of us are taking part in for some reason. No idea why (Twitter maybe).

Also, we both sort of came around to the idea that this whole writing thing in the open is largely for us. Don’t get me wrong, the comments, emails, and all the other stuff we both get from readers is amazing. In many ways the few comments I get drive me forward — but they drive me to really to think more clearly about the things I write, not to write more. We both sort of looked at each other and said that we didn’t care about the rules of blogging — you know, post everyday as many times as you can, comment at a ton of blogs, and link to all sorts of people and stories … it just doesn’t matter to me. I love writing, sharing my thoughts, and getting the occasional feedback from those who do read. But at the end of the day my thoughts towards why and how I blog are changing. This is all sort of new stuff in my head, but I thought I would throw it out there and see what others are thinking. Are we all just sort of changing our perspective on this stuff or is there really something changing in the space that makes us refocus? I’m not sure. Would I be a hypocrite to ask for feedback?

Google Co-op

/ Cole Camplese / Leave a comment

I’ve added a new search field that I want to test out for a couple of weeks here at the site. It is powered by Google Co-op … no sense in going through the commentary of how Google seems to be running everything on the web … at any rate the Co-op is nice as I can add what sites I want to be searched. Gives me the ability to cast my search results here just a little wider. I write in several places online and this search pulls results from all of them — right from here. I’m not thrilled with the ads it also returns, but features come at a cost. I wonder if they are tied to my ad sense account (I don’t run ads on this site) … Try it out and let me know what you think.