Professional and Personal Persona

Welcome Back!

It has been a while!

Well friends, here we are. The final blog post. We have discovered a lot together from our introduction, to code-breaking, to using, analyzing, and creating in the digital world. But this week has one of the most important aspects of critical digital literacy, your own persona and digital citizenship.

You may think that your persona in the digital world is anonymous. However, I'm here to tell you that you are dead wrong. In fact, your persona online makes you more public than ever. Online, anybody can find you if they look hard enough. This is important because if you are thinking of going into a profession where your reputation matters (aka any profession), then you must be very careful in the digital world. This is because the first thing prospective employers look at is your digital footprint, namely, they search your name and see what comes up in the search results. If anything seemingly crude, inappropriate, and unprofessional comes up, odds are you will not be hired. And what's more, no matter how much you try to remove those unprofessional aspects, they remain on the internet forever.

All this learning about critical digital literacy prompted me over the past few weeks to make a Twitter account. It is not a professional account, it is much more a personal one. However, in knowing that what I comment on, share, tweet, or like may be found in the future through a simple search and can decide whether I get a job or not, I must still remain appropriate and professional on this personal account.

Juliet Hinrichsen and Antony Coombs speak about online persona and the steps one must take to remain a healthy participant in the digital world. First, they write about identity building, in which one develops their own identity online. Next, they speak of managing reputations. This is key because to remain professional in the digital world, one must be respectful and smart to continue to have a positive reputation online. Lastly, they speak of participating. Participating is the concept of interacting with others online to accomplish tasks or have conversations. One must always remain respectful here especially because online, anything can be taken out of context and so, to make sure you stay as professional as possible, you must be careful of what you say, post, comment, like, or anything else.

These ideas are what I feel, as a soon-to-be teacher, we must be teaching our future generation. From what I witnessed in high school, students feel as though they can say anything online because they think they are invisible and invincible in the digital world. However, we must teach students from a young age that whatever they post on the internet will at some point be looked at by somebody and can mess up your future if it is overtly inappropriate and unprofessional. Teaching students that what they put out there in the digital world will be there for all to see is a way to prevent students from inadvertently saying or associating themselves with something that may harm them later in their lives. The knowledge I have gained over these past few months will significantly impact my teaching career because I now have a better sense of what the digital world entails when it comes to safety and how to navigate it. It is definitely knowledge and practice that I will be taking into my classroom.

This time around, I decided to utilize a creative make that is unconventional but still drives home my point about being cautious about what you put on the internet. I created a Kahoot! A Kahoot is an online quiz-style game that allows people to join if they have the proper code. As a teacher, creating Kahoots are an easy way to see what level of understanding your students are at regarding the content because you can create a Kahoot specifically designed for your course. I chose to do this because I wanted to provide an example of a secure place to interact with people online. Because you must have the code to join, it is far more secure than something like Facebook where, once you post something or even just sign up, your information is out there in the world. With that said, one must still be careful because, if you are averse to giving any information on the internet at all, to make a Kahoot you must create an account that, if searched for properly, can be found by people and whatever information you provide can be found. With that said, I must mention the critical element;

 do not be afraid to put yourself out there. It is similar to going outside; you put yourself at risk every time you step outside. However, the odds of something harming you are extremely slim as long as you are careful. The digital world is precisely the same in that, you put yourself at risk as soon as you put any information at all online; but, if you are smart and careful, the odds of something bad happening are incredibly small. Now, with all of that said, I created a Kahoot to test your knowledge of critical digital literacy. It is straightforward and you don't need an account for it so feel free to try it out and let me know in the comments how well you did.

Kahoot is unique because I feel it utilizes every aspect of critical digital literacy that we have spoken about in the past. It is not as simple to navigate as something like Google or YouTube so it definitely takes some code-breaking. However, once it is understood, you can use it, learn about it, understand it, and, if you so choose, create your own with relative ease. These are all the aspects I took into account when creating this Kahoot. I used it a fair amount in my high school years as a way to engage my classmates during my presentations. As a result, I have a fairly vast knowledge of how to navigate it. So creating came fairly easily to me. However, if you find yourself struggling, try watching a video that teaches you the basics of how to play on or create a Kahoot, or, if you want to challenge yourself, try to learn to navigate it through trial-and-error (its far more fun than it sounds 😊)
Overall, learning about critical digital literacy has really altered my view of the entire digital landscape. I have learned how to understand aspects of the digital world, how to navigate the digital landscapes, and how to maintain a professional demeanour online. Before we conclude, I thought I might share with you a Mindomo mind map that I created with the aspects of critical digital literacy about the aspects of critical digital literacy. There is a lot to unpack here, and I know it may look daunting at first, but if you're finding it hard to remember or navigate, just look at the core concepts and think about what they mean to you.

Well, that its folks! We have unpacked as much as we have time for about the elements of critical digital literacy! Wow, we explored a lot! It has been quite a fun ride! Who knows...maybe I'll post again in a short while. Perhaps I'll have the inclination to want to share what I discover about the digital world with all of you!

I'm interested though...what aspects of the digital world have you understood differently as a result of these blog posts?

Have you tried things you otherwise wouldn't have? If so what? And was it easier to navigate using these concepts we have learned about?

Thank you all for joining me on this long, incredible journey through the digital world and critical digital literacy! It's been a fantastic time! Until next time. 😊❤

References

Hinrichsen, J., & Coombs, A. (2013). The five resources of critical digital literacy: A framework for curriculum integration. Research in Learning Technology, 21.          doi:10.3402/rlt.v21.21334