Tag: digital identity

Webinar: Yik Yak on Campus – What You Need to Know About the Latest Anonymous Social Scene

Yik Yak on Campus: What You Need to Know About the Latest Anonymous Social Scene

Update: I’m giving a webinar on Wednesday, February 18th, at 2PM Eastern Time on Yik Yak on Campus: What You Need to Know About the Latest Anonymous Social Scene.

I’ll show you how Yik Yak works, provide examples of cyber-bullying AND positivity in actual mobile posts, and outline a strategy for anonymous-mobile discourse at your campus.

Students are quickly flocking to this application, posting anonymous “yaks” and engaging in good, bad, and ugly communication. A number of institutions have seen high-profile incidents involving the app in recent weeks including sharing of sex tapes, hate speech and harassment and threatening to commit a violent crime on campus.

Colleges and universities from across the United States are struggling with how to respond and whether or not there is value in being present on the platform.

What you will learn:

  • The history of Yik Yak and why it was geo-fenced at high schools.
  • Strategies for engaging your students via Yik Yak in a positive way to encourage positive change on campus.
  • Examples of troubling, real campus crises triggered by “Yaks” across North America and discover the practical ways to respond if similar “Yaks” appear on your campus.
  • Social media guidelines — for applications even beyond Yik Yak — that you can successfully adapt, construct and engage the campus community through your own social media standards.
  • How you can use Yik Yak as a social listening channel to explore your own campus themes and learning opportunities.

Once again, I’ll be partnering with PaperClip Communications for this webinar. Check out their site for more information and to register.

More info about Yik Yak: A recent post that I wrote about Yik Yak and why it is causing so many issues at campuses in the United States.

Digital Identity Keynote at Curry College

Eric Stoller - Digital Identity Development keynote

I started 2013 off with a digital identity talk at Curry College for their Career Services Conference for Seniors. They were an awesome group! I’ve included the video of my talk and a Storify from the event:

Continue reading Digital Identity Keynote at Curry College

Digital Identity, Social Media, Privacy, and Balance

Digital Identity and Social Media

Part of the experience of being a keynote speaker at the Jon C. Dalton Institute on College Student Values is that you get to do an interview with the Character Clearinghouse at Florida State University. The questions from Pamela Crosby, the editor of the site (as well as the Journal of College and Character), were stellar. Here’s an excerpt:

Why should students care about their digital identity?
Students should care about their digital identity for a variety of reasons. As members of a campus community, it is important for students to know that their online actions can have impact. Student Conduct offices are no longer just concerned with what happens in the brick-and-mortar campus spaces. Additionally, most students are pursuing future careers, and higher education is their launch pad. Social media posts can show up in search engine queries. Companies are no longer just looking at your resume. They want to know what you are doing (and saying) online too. Now, that’s more of the punitive side of things. Digital identity is about much more than just worrying about its effects on future employment or conduct violations. Students with a fluent grasp of social media can accelerate their learning, develop meaningful connections with peers, and grow their professional network. What we do online can affect our face-to-face interactions…and vice versa.

Why should higher education be concerned about students’ digital identity?
I think that when the original work on “digital natives” and “digital immigrants” first became popular, it caused an educational disconnect. Administrators and staff at institutions seemingly (without a lot of critical discourse) bought the rhetoric that students were digitally savvy. In fact, students are no better at creating and cultivating their digital identity than anyone else. We’re all digital students in the sense that we are constantly learning how to use the social tools while they are constantly evolving. Schools need to be intentional about how they incorporate digital identity development into their educational constructs. Social media are not a trend or a fad that are going to someday evaporate. We need to be proactive with teaching our students how to build their digital identity versus being reactive whenever they post something that we wish hadn’t made it onto the web. Like anything in education, critical conversations about digital identity are essential. It’s like that movie, “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” we have to jump in, create our own digital identity, and educate our students too.

Read the rest of the interview at the Character Clearinghouse site.