How to overcome what scares us about our online identities

• Faculty members are hesitant to have an online persona
• Things like professional websites and online journals have made a big impact in how scientists communicate with one another
• Creating and maintaining a digital identity can be time consuming, but there are many tools available to make it easier

 I'm left wondering what are the most appropriate and professional forms of an online identity. Also, we made websites in previous classes but at this point in my career, I don't feel like I really need one. Is that naive?

I can see how online identities could help me find and share my ideas for things like pedagogy and research. It also makes me much easier to find (which I think is a good thing?). I also think blogs could be utilized in my future classes. I might have students blog about how current events or news articles relate to physiology.

What enhanced E-books can do for for scholarly authors

• Faculty have the capability to create their own textbooks
• These textbooks can be much more dynamic than traditional textbooks as well as traditional E-books
• Authors can scale the content of these books up or down depending on the audience

I do get a little concerned that the content of these textbooks isn't checked. I wonder what sort of quality control is available.

This article really made me think of Anatomy lab. Students currently use a text that is created for NDSU students by and NDSU instructor. This is a traditional text. An enhanced E-book could be a huge improvement. Having a lab manual with rich, high quality images and interactive components seems like it could greatly improve the way students interact with that material. I also think its really cool that Apple has a free product available, so maybe this isn't too far off of a possibility.