By the time you begin to feel comfortable in the medium, one finds out that there is more to it than these three steps. What is said in a blog or posting stays online indefinitely so having an understanding of how to apply responsible digital communication skills to the forum you are working in is very important from the get-go.
Just because a comment is deleted doesn’t mean that it is gone forever. Actually, the comment stays hidden until a search crawler uncovers it again to be revealed to the world. If the comment is simply something that you didn’t feel reflected your best work, then it will probably be ok. If you wrote a snarky blog post or posted pictures that could damage someone’s reputation…then likely it will come back to bite you in the near future.
According to Richardson (2010) one great use for blogs in the educational environment is for teachers to communicate course expectations with students. The efficiency of being able to use blog entries for course management frees up valuable class time learning activities. Proper digital manners are easier to follow when simply presenting course materials. The trouble educators can get into begins with areas of digital communication where elements of free speech or social interaction come into play.
One difficulty for adult digital learners is that they are behind the curve when it comes to understanding digital literacy. Blogs or social media sites such as Facebook are not the same as the old red diary of days long past. There is no hidden key and the little brother lurking in the shadows to take a peek may actually be an internet aggregate news feed.
In quantifying his themes of digital citizenship, Ribble (n.d.) reminds us that digital citizens have a right to free speech and privacy. Unfortunately many users have not learned how to appropriately interact in a digital forum prior to getting online. This leaves plenty of room for error.
In choosing to use social media and blogging in my educational practice, I will have to learn how to be a responsible digital communicator immediately. To help me along the way, I’ve found a couple of seasoned bloggers to learn from.
Chris Brogan in his blog post Etiquette in the Age of Social Media a good rule of thumb is to make sure that you are linking to the blog source when referring to the material included within. Right now I use hyperlinks, but as I become savvy on how to create rich blog posts, I am sure that I will begin to find other tips and techniques to use in the near future.
Melanie Nelson in her blog post 5 Blogging Etiquette Tips for Beginning Bloggers focuses on permission and copyright issues in her third tip. Because I have such a hard time figuring out what images are freely available on the Creative Commons arena, I haven’t added any to my blog site at all yet. I have been taking quite a few of my own photographs lately in preparation as source material, but uploading them is a task for yet another day.
The duo of Tim Urban and Andrew Finn who partner on the wait by why blog site share on the Huff Post Tech site that most of the 7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook center on the users intent of self- focused promotion.
With these lessons in toe, I leave my readers today. One of the other elements of responsible digital communication is to be short and to the point. Obviously I haven’t mastered that rule yet.
References
Ribble,
M. (n.d.). Nine elements: Nine themes of
digital citizenship. Retrieved May 30, 2012, from http://www.digitalcitizenship.net/Nine_Elements.html
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms
(3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 
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