Reflections on Digital Identity
Have you ever Googled yourself? Before now, and the requirement to do so as part of this reflective essay for my Digital Authorship class at the University of Rhode Island, I had not. I found what I expected to find, mostly artifacts from my professional life as an educator, librarian, and history teacher, with a few family connections and moderately-paced road race times thrown in.
Over time, I have grown more comfortable as a digital author as it relates to my work life. On the personal side, I have never felt the anguish of deciding to delete my Facebook account because I never had one to begin with. It is far easier for me to create and share online when it is to the benefit of students and my learning as part of an educator network instead of sharing my personal life.
As a teacher and library media specialist, I serve as a collaborator in the digital creative productions of my students. Midway through my career, Web 2.0 and phrases such as “create for an audience of more than one” brought an emphasis on user-generated content, social media, and the participatory web. I guided students to create and share research papers in the form of websites, write for our class blog, and eventually joined Twitter. As my students were creating online, so was I, mostly in the form of websites, wikis, and presentations for projects and teacher professional development.
A highlight of my experiences with digital authorship came in my last few years as a history teacher in another district as the town prepared for its 375th anniversary. Inspired by a flier posted outside the school’s main office, a close colleague and I embarked on a history writing endeavor. After months of research and drafting, we authored and published two articles in the local newspaper’s series on the town’s historical commemoration. Lives Lived Unfree: Stories of Reading’s Enslaved Part 1 and Part 2 eventually became an in-person historical walking tour and information is available to a broader audience on the Reading Remembrance Tour website. Along with an amazing colleague and the work of a local social justice group, digital authorship was key to bringing this important public history information to a broader audience, including library staff, town historians, students, teachers, and school and local leaders.
Much of my digital identity as an author remains wrapped up in the creation of educational content including a library media center website, library newsletters, how-to screencast tutorials, and Wakelet and Padlet curations. I am much more comfortable with my online presence when it is behind the content rather than presenting personal opinions.
Related to my reluctance to share personal elements of myself online, a key challenge I have faced with digital authorship is with the promotion of content I have created. As Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, director of the National Writing Project, asserts in “Writing in the Digital Age” (2013), writing for an online audience requires thoughtfulness about form, audience, and context. Promoting your work online and reaching an audience is an important part of that. The promotional aspect of digital authorship is also connected to several of the inquiry questions that drive our class, including: What is the relationship between readers and writers in a digital age? How do learners develop competencies as digital authors? How is personal, social, and political identity embodied in the practice of digital authorship? And, how could my digital competencies advance across my lifetime?
“Your digital identity is situational and contextual: it changes as a result of your life experiences, actions, and education,” asserts Professor Renee Hobbs. “It is shaped by your areas of expertise, interests, publications, reputation and anything else that signals how people understand who you are.” I aspire to become more savvy and comfortable with digital authorship, including creativity, design, style, images, and promotions. Certainly, EDC 534 will positively impact my digital identity, and I look forward to learning more.
Image attribution: Created by freepik
