I created my first blog in seventh grade. It was a Livejournal full of angst and images of my favorite movie characters. It was also a mistake. What I didn’t know then was that blogs are an opportunity to create a digital identity for oneself.   Blogs provide us free advertising for our passions, thoughts and ideals. The important thing to remember is that blogs can be linked back to our offline identities (unless you choose to write anonymously).  If some one would have looked up “Katie Kalk” in 1999, they would have discovered my true feelings about my math class and other embarrassing facts.

Thankfully my livejournal has long since been deleted. Although my Xanga continues to haunt me.  I picked up blogging again when I started traveling and living aboard. Blogging is a tool perfectly adapted to keeping in contact with large numbers of people. When I moved to Daegu, South Korea I started my blog to keep in touch with my family. Two years later my blog had been chosen by the Korean Department of Tourism as an exemplary expat blog with over 13,000 views. This was far from internet fame but I was hooked nevertheless.

Now that I am studying for my professional development I am trying to create a more academic blogging presence. I still enjoying blogging my travels and I’m hooked on micro-blogging like twitter and tumblr.  I hope to link my work with this class with that of my work position with the Digital Tattoo Project. The Digital Tattoo Project is UBC funded and run through the learning commons. I work with content creation both on the blog, website and wiki. The topics covered by my blogs have little in common with that of my seventh grade self. My enjoyment with writing and sharing has remained unchanged.