It's Crunch Time!

Next week officially starts spring break in my district and I CAN NOT WAIT! I have spring fever to the max and, between my students and this class, I feel like my brain is fried!                                                                                                                This week, I feel particularly overwhelmed. We went over the specific requirements of the #fieldguide project and I really do not feel like it's any more clear. Last week when we shared our ideas, I felt like I had a great idea, but when I shared out, it wasn't specific enough. So in my blog post, I explored a new idea, that I was fleshing out, but then listening to the requirements and hearing the other conferences that were occurring, mine still didn't feel like it was right. 

Then, I thought maybe I'd create a unit of lessons as my own personal #fieldguide for helping my students navigate the digital age and explore their digital citizenship, footprint, and identity. After conferencing, I see that's still too broad and Dr. Zamora helped me think about the possible issues I may encounter, which made me nervous. We talked about how digital citizenship, footprint, and identity are such very different ideas. Truthfully, I didn't realize they were. I felt that they are all so intertwined and connected.

So I read a little bit about each and found:

  • digital footprint is a trail of data you create while using the Internet. There's "passive digital footprint" which is the trail you leave unintentionally, such as your search history. An "active digital footprint" would be an email, one intentionally sent and left online. This is data you expect to be seen by someone.
  • A digital identity is an online identity claimed on the internet. One user may have more than one identity through multiple communities. It's my understanding that this is more about how people choose to present themselves on the network.
  • Digital citizenship is the appropriate and responsible use of technology and behavior.

I now see how these three ideas could take me down very different rabbit holes. This I don't want. I decided I'm going to go back to revisit my old idea of "F-Instas" which to me, sounds like digital identity, especially the idea of having more than one identity for more than one community. When Dr. Zamora and I talked, she mentioned thinking of instagram and adolescents in terms of what accounts they have, how many, how do they present themselves differently based off of the community they want to view it, and who is a part of the community, with the context being how students see themselves in terms of F-Instas.

SO HERE'S MY NEW IDEA: 

  • The creation of multiple digital identities by adolescents highlights their need to share versions of themselves online, proving that there is no distinction between "real life" and "digital life".
BAM!!!

In researching for this topic, I read the article "The Straw Man of Digital Dualism" by John Suler, and had a nice conversation with Luna P over whether or not the article is biased or even takes a stance! You can read more about that when you head to my second post of the week: "Fancy Words for Simple Concepts"! 

With Luna P., I plan to [drink coffee and wine] explore the following questions:

  • How do adolescents define digital identity? 
    • I do not think it's appropriate to talk about adolescents digital identity and analyzing how they create one, without first knowing and understanding their perception of digital identity. I plan to survey my students to get a census of their views of themselves online.
  • What are the different accounts adolescents have? How many of each do they have?
  • Who has access to each of these accounts?
  • Who do adolescents want to have access to these accounts? Who do they not want to have access?
I plan to gather two-three articles a week, in addition to the articles I've already gathered, to explore both sides of digital dualism and propose an intended solution. I also think it would be amazing to tell part of the story of digital dualism and those who are anti-digital dualism, through memes or gifs! We've talked so much about how they convey ideas in a different manner, that I think it would be both funny and powerful at the same time.

I also wanted to end my blog post with a quick comment about how much difficulty I was having doing the "Bot" make. The site required me to verify my twitter account, but kept saying it didn't recognize my twitter or email. Despite having used my digital alchemist's twitter, in addition to hypothes.is, I'm not sure why it has proved difficult. I hope that we can address and figure this out in class. 





Comments

  1. While I regret it has take so much effort to get here I am pleased to see you have a more specific focus for the field guide. I think you have it within range.

    If I understand right, it's looking at the reasons and motivations for adolescents creating multiple representations / accounts *within the same platform*, finstas but also other services where they might have different representation, e.g. multiple email, messaging accounts. An adult reaction might be that they are trying to have a secretive identity that maybe their parents won't see, where in reality it might be just a way for them to explore different facets of a developing personality.

    I'd recommend looking at the research work of danah boyd, some represented in her book "It's complicated" http://www.danah.org/itscomplicated/learn-more/ which builds upon her field research of spending a lot of time in conversation with teens all over the country (this was some time ago).

    Don't worry about the twitter bot; if we can do a small video session in class where you can share your screen, I can help you sort out the problem. We want to see Luna P do alot of tweeting.

    ReplyDelete

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