Hi there. My name is Ben Vaughan and I’m going into my third year of the Bachelor of Education (Primary) program.

This is my very first blog post for EDCI 339! At this particular time, all links to the course website are giving me a “service unavailable” notice, and I don’t remember if there was a specific prompt for this particular post giving direction as to what to write about (although I’m sure I read a list of suggestions somewhere). So I will start by reflecting on my feelings about the course topic and content so far—and add to this later if that seems necessary.

My interest in the topic of distributed and open learning is relatively low (particularly at the moment—I just proposed and my fiancée and I are now planning our wedding for the end of next month); this particular course just happened to fit with my schedule and seemed less distateful than other courses. I’m in the Education program simply because I love working directly with kids, with a strong preference for outdoor, in-person education. I have a brother and a close friend who have always been interested in developments in technology and by contrast I can tell I just don’t have the same interest. On the contrary, I’ve always been something of a Luddite. I didn’t own a phone until my mid-thirties, when the job of summer camp director required me to.

Concerning digital identity cultivation, one of the best decisions I’ve made in recent years has been to discontinue use of all social media platforms. As an educator I would strongly recommend this to most students. The business of cultivating an online identity at all seems fraught. Over the past year I worked in after-school care and every day there watched kids becoming quickly and progressively addicted to their electronic devices, diving further into virtuality, fully embracing the systems of attention reward designed to keep them there. Would teaching them about the importance of not posting things rashly on social media so as to protect their future job prospects (etc.) be worthwhile? Perhaps it would. But it seems far from a crucial issue—making, on the whole, relatively little contact with questions of personal fulfillment and happiness.

All that said, I myself have made use of open learning in ways I’m grateful for. The most obvious example has been completing my first year classes for the current university program online, over the course of nine years, through the open learning department of Thompson Rivers University. So I cannot entirely be a negative Nancy on the subject. Online tools can certainly be used beneficially, and maintaining positive and active online profiles and presences can play an important role in job acquisition (etc.) and, by extension, a part in a modern life well lived.

But again, for anyone who can do without them, I would suggest eschewing digital identities as much as possible.

Brief reflection on this week’s readings: the articles were dry, jargon-y and in the case of the one on “socially being real and present on digital networks” poorly written, but I did read them through. The main takeaway from all of them is a frustration with the authors’ getting away with using words like “should” in the normative sense, without any further ethical inquiry. As I have suggested, it may be that in relation to well-being, one will be generally better off carefully avoiding rather than carefully curating digital identities. Whether my hunch is right or not, failure to address the question just seems careless, rendering the articles’ contents potentially irrelevant at best to concerned educators.