Phase 2: Find External References For Your Activity

Having settled on a topic or theme for an activity that is strongly related to your identity, the next step is to create your annotated multimedia bibliography for external references. These references should provide description of your chosen activity and while situating it in digital networked culture. Consider the types of materials you’ll be referencing (e.g. books, journals, magazines, films, conference proceedings, recordings) and then do a search for these materials. You will be able to use these materials as points of departure for the rest of the Blog project, and you can add to this pool of resources at any point along the way. You will be expected to develop textual/media documentation of your own in the process of making your annotations, which should both describe and be critical of the resources. Your goal will be to find at least ten (10) external references and to comment on them in preparation for the Blog you will be developing.

Phase 2a:Framework for Analyzing References

Therefore, you may wish to consider the following:

1) What are the thesis, main points or characteristics of this text/work/performance/presentation/site in its own terms?

2) What is the purpose of the text/work/performance/presentation/site? Is it to:

• persuade the reader/audience to do something, for example, to vote a certain way, purchase an item, or attend an event?

• inform the reader/audience, for example, through the results of a study or experiment, or what happened at an event?

• prove something to the reader/audience, for example, that a certain behavior is bad/good, or a certain method that works/doesn't work?

3) What resources did the author/maker/designer/community use to inform his/her/their arguments? How are these arguments supported?

4) Organization and Content:

• Is the material organized and focused?

• Is the argument or presentation understandable?

• Is this original research, a review of previous research, or an informative piece?

• Is it a community with certain characteristics?

5) Audience: For what type of reader/audience is the author writing?

• general readers,

• students (high school, college, graduate),

• specialists or professionals,

• researchers or scholars

• community

• activists

• and so on

Phase 3: From Annotated Bibliography to Blog

In this phase, we will simply be reframing the idea of an annotated bibliography in the form of a blog and a series of blog entries. You will be required to set up a blog, whether through your student account at SFU, or through other blogging tools available on the internet (e.g. blogger, wordpress, etc.). You will transfer the material developed and explored in your annotated bibliography to your blog . You may make individual blog entries for each of the references you will be describing and criticizing but essentially you are free to develop this material in ant way that is useful to your blog – not necessarily in a strictly academic way.

Keep in mind, your postings should show your understanding of the selected sources and the other material in IAT 401 (see references in Web CT on identity and on Blogs). Use information from these sources (or other credible sources, including others' postings or your personal experience) to support your claims – i.e. that the activities you’ve selected help to form your individual identity. To enhance the critical content of your work, avoid making statements purely based on feelings and personal opinion. In other words, try to ground these subjective feelings and opinions in practical experience (see Phase 4, up next).

Phase 4: Find Internal References For Your Activity

Having settled on a topic or theme for an activity that is strongly related to your identity, and then having found external references that help to describe and evaluate the activity in a larger context, the next step is to turn inward and reflect on your own practical experience. Consider any artifacts that have been produced by your involvement with the activity that can be reproduced in a digital format for your blog. For example, if it’s a sport that is your interest and you’ve found a medal or newspaper clipping related to your participation, take a digital photo or scan it. If it’s film that you’re into, a clip of your own work. If graphic design’s your thing, maybe a sample of your portfolio, etc. etc.

Again, you will be expected to develop textual/media documentation of your own in the process of reflecting upon and making annotations for these artifacts. Your goal will be to find at least five (5) internal references over the course of the assignment, though they don’t need to be determined all at once. As this part of the project involve both reflection upon your activities and referencing your own work or artifacts produced from these activities, you will be addressing the key concept of “self-referentiality” in digital networked culture.

Phase 5: Developing a complex or compound Indetity

At this point you’ve framed out – using a blog and a series of blog entries- part of your identity as based on an activity or activities that support this identity. You’ve accumulated, described, and evaluated a set of key resources (properly referenced!) that situate the activity in a larger community of practice and that help to present your place and role within this community. Finally, you’ve gathered some artifacts that have been produced from your own participation in the activity that support your claims about your role in the community. If you don’t have these in place at this point, you’ll need to do so.

You will then emulate the presentation by Sxip’s Dick Hardt on Identity 2.0, where Hardt’s personal and professional identity were effectively blurred in order to make a sales pitch for his company. In order to create such a compound or complex identity, you will develop a separate blog where your chosen activity and your role in its community of practice are recontextualized with YOU as a marketer. In other words, you now have a sales pitch behind your activities. This sales pitch may be for some product that you endorse or have a stake in, or it may be in terms of marketing your own skills, i.e. YOU as a brand. You may need to rework some of the analysis in your entries to support your “sales pitch” or “brand message”, or you may find the cultural descriptions and criticisms consistent with your role as a marketer.

Phase 6: Reflect Upon the Key Question

Finish the individual part of the module project by adding final entries (250 words min.) to blog. For this final entry, you will reflect upon the question of “Identity Online” and summarize your technical and writerly approach to blogging. Discuss these on your own terms, while grounding your ideas in the course materials. The idea here is to take a final reflective step in considering issues such as identity, activity, “goal forming”, community, etc. as they shaped your Blog.