Back in April I started contemplating my digital presence and identity. I understand my identity to be the different expressions of my myself, depending on which role I occupy. Online I want to be an educator, a professional who is passionate about children and their education. I came up with a plan to support the development of this digital educator identity, and if you read my blogpost “How will I cultivate and support my digital presence” (Fahrenbruch, 2018), you will know I decided to use my program Facebook page, LinkedIn, Slack and Feedly to help me. It is now two months later and time to take a look at how successful I was with the implementation of my plan.
As with many plans, parts of it went as I envisioned, my LinkedIn account is growing with new connections made every day. I like this social media tool because it offers me enough control to be intentional about who I invite into my professional network. Facebook on the other hand created a number of tensions. I was used to posting personal content, now I was reinventing my presence on this platform. I began thinking about all the crossovers to my private account from student users of the program Facebook page, suddenly I was reluctant to post on this platform. I needed to stop and think about how I would create my professional self on a platform that had only experienced my personal side (Schryver, 2013, para. 1). The thought of linking my academic blog to this Facebook program page made me realize the users, current and former students, would not necessarily be all that interested in my contemplations about technology. I am still conflicted as to what to do. I added however a new tool I had not considered before, Twitter. I am figuring out my presence on this, to me, new media tool; and I have a few followers, encouragement to continue.
Slack has been a really fun tool to use and I truly enjoy connecting with my cohort, it keeps me grounded in the course because it helps me to feel part of a community. Feedly has been helpful to keep me organized with the course postings and I have created some of my own feeds, which give me material for my tweets.
In April I began my digital presence mostly as a “visitor” (White & Le Cornu, 2011, para. 4) to the net, today I see myself beginning to settle more, approaching a certain ease within a “resident” (White & Le Cornu, 2011, para. 5) space in my professional life.
References
Fahrenbruch, A. (2018, May 2). Re: How will I cultivate and support my digital presence. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://malat-webspace.royalroads.ca/rru0053/how-will-i-cultivate-and-support-my-digital-presence/
White, D., & Le Cornu, A. (2010). Eventedness and disjuncture in virtual worlds. Educational Research, 52(2), 183–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2010.482755
Schryver, K. (2013, February 5). Who are you online? Considering issues of web identity. The New York Times.
