Author: chasebrown (Page 2 of 2)

Digital Identity

In a world becoming more digitalized by the day, it is essential to be mindful of your digital identity. A digital identity is how you choose to present yourself online and includes your professional and personal identity. A personal identity aligns closely with your social life and personal connections with others. This includes sharing posts of you and your friends at the beach, updating your friends through an Instagram Story, watching your favourite TikTok’s or using social media to make plans with friends. Contrastingly, a professional digital identity is built to support career aspirations and or contribute to academic or professional networks. For example, to support your professional identity, you may create an educational podcast about the stock market, keep your LinkedIn profile up-to-date or contribute to an industry online forum.

A way to differentiate between professional and personal identities is to recognize the difference in topic matter, language and tone found in the content that an individual shares and engages with. For example, on my personal Instagram account, I may be eager to share a photo of my friends and I at a winery, but that same photo may not be appropriate or support my professional endeavours. Additionally, creating a blog post about the importance of teaching phonetic awareness and functional skills to children may aid me in my quest to become a teacher, but the language and concepts may not be accessible to my family and friends on my personal account. As we can see, it is important to be mindful of how our engagement on social media needs to be informed by the audience that will be seeing and engaging with us online.

Despite being seemingly different, an individuals professional and personal identity are two sides of the same coin and influence one another. As a result of this interconnectedness, it is important to maintain boundaries between our professional and digital identities. Some ways to do that is:

• Creating separate accounts: This allows individuals to have different accounts in which they can tailor their content to align with the audience that will be seeing it. For example, I have an Instagram account for my personal endeavors and one about mental health to build a professional identity

• Be respectful: ensure what you are posting on all accounts is respectful, culturally sensitive and positively contributes to the community you are adding to. For example, use language and commentary that would be appropriate for both professional and personal audiences.

• Be mindful: be mindful of what you are posting on social media and reduce the risk of your engagement being taken out of context and negatively influencing your professional endeavors.

The ideas listed above are just a few suggestions as to how you can create barriers and contribute competently to both your professional and personal identities. It is very important to keep these separate as one can negatively impact the other. Social media gives us the opportunity to expand our horizons, connect with others and contribute to industry settings, it is just as important that we are cautious as to how we do it.

Digital Visitor and Resident Map

A digital visitor and resident map can allow people to look at how they use social media and technology and how it influences their personal and professional identities. The continuum above aims to explain how I use social media and online applications to either learn or take in information (digital visitor) or connect through social connection with others (digital resident). Through this diagram, I realized that I use social media for connectivity and social connection more than I had initially thought. I predominantly thought I used media for learning or personal enjoyment, but through this exercise I learned that many of my preferred apps have an interpersonal component. I believe that as I and others enter different stages in life, such as entering the workforce, becoming a parent, retiring and more, this diagram will continue to shift. For example, I believe that as I enter the workforce, more applications will begin to be added to the professional component of the visitor and resident map.

Privacy and Digital Footprint Awareness

Despite the vast applicability of social media, it is important to be cautious of our privacy and our digital footprint. Our digital footprint is an accumulation of all of our online activities. This includes what what we post, the purchases we make, the people we talk to, the newsletters we follow and even our search history. As we can see, our digital footprint exposes a lot of information about our life making the ways we protect our privacy essential.

Below are four ways that I choose to protect myself on the internet and some ways that you can too!

1. Deleting or deactivating old shopping and social media accounts: You don’t need that middle school Instagram account anymore
2. Check your privacy settings: our privacy settings constantly change, especially on social media platforms. It is important to ensure that you are aware of the level of privacy you have on your accounts, so you know if you are making others privy to private information
3. Think before posting: ensure that what you are posting is not overly personal or include any personal information about where you are living, staying or about your employment that you would not want strangers to see
4. Restrict mobile app permissions: be cautious about what information apps have made available to them. For example, do they have access to your audio, video, locations or contacts? Many apps work just as well without that additional information

It is important that as a merchant and user of technology that we take measures to ensure that our information is safeguarded and protected. Using protection strategies can reduce the risk of having your personal information hacked and protect your online reputation.

Theories of Personalized Learning

Every learner is unique, requiring different pedagogy for competent learning. Theories of personalized learning such as self-directed learning and the constructivist approach offer different benefits to their students. I find that my preference for each style, is entirely dependent on the intrinsic motivation I have for the subject that I am learning. If I am enjoying the subject matter and am intrinsically motivated, I tend to feel empowered by the constructivist approach—a theory emphasizing the active role of learners in building their own understandings. When given the room to conduct my own research and real-world problems on topics I am interested in, I find I retain more information and feel intrinsically motivated to learn more about the topic than what is required for class. For example, I am very interested in literacy development in children and as a result, have done a lot of reading and pursued a volunteer position in an elementary school teaching literacy skills to be able to better understand the science of reading.

Dissimilarly, I find that when I am working on subject matter that does not interest me or align with my career goals I prefer self-guided learning. Self-guided learning asks students to assess their readiness to learn, set goals and engage in the learning process with active reflection. I find this empowers my learning as the reflection allows me to stay on track with my learning when I may not be intrinsically motivated to do so and encourages me to step outside my comfort zone through the process of learning. The self-guided learning strategy has become influential for my career goals as it has given me the skills to conduct self-reflection and create shifts as needed to ensure I am receiving adequate amounts of information and creating quality products.

Key Takeaways