Your Digital Identity

LEAP 1

Your digital identity is situational and contextual: it changes as a result of your life experiences, actions, and education. It is shaped by your areas of expertise, interests, publications, reputation and anything else that signals how people understand who you are.

In this assignment, students reflect on their identity as a digital author through collaborative and creative work. Before writing an essay, they explore:

1. What is Your Digital Identity According to Google? Students use the My Activity page to explore what information Google knows about them . as a user of digital media. Then, they explore what Google tells others about them, using a browser in incognito mode, and typing in their name (with quotation marks) into a search engine, reviewing and reflecting on the results. What do you find? How do you feel about what you find (or what’s not there)?
2. Discuss Their Digital Identity with a Peer. Students schedule time with an assigned partner to “think aloud” how their life experiences as both a consumer and creator have shaped their online identity. They document or record the dialogue, reflecting on a set of questions from Hobbs Create to Learn Chapter 1.
3. Compose an Essay. After documenting their discussions about their digital identity with a peer, they consider how their life experiences have shaped how they think about their identity as both a reader and writer in the digital realm. They also create a single slide for a collaborative Google Slide Deck and post their work on Medium, sharing their essays on Twitter with the hashtag #EDC534.