Multi-dimensional Digital Identity

This is a comment and reflection I shared on this blog post by Allysia Doratti, one of Dean Shareski‘s EC&I 832 graduate students in fall 2024: Mirror, Mirror, On My Feed: Exploring Identity in a Digital World.

Hi Allysia- Thanks so much for this thoughtful post and especially for the reflections on digital identity and sharing it with students. With my own middle schoolers this semester I am going to focus more on identity and digital identity. This is the Google Slides “identity collage assignment” I’ve been using for several semesters now and reflects some of the ideas from your post.

I really love how Dean has you all blogging and using WordPress, it’s been my go-to idea sharing platform since 2005. I definitely struggle and debate with myself when it comes to digital identity and figuring out what my “aspirational identity” is and should be. I like how you point out that using different media platforms to showcase different aspects of ourselves is not necessarily disingenuous or misleading, it is just natural, since there are different affordances to different platforms, and our identities are both complex and multifaceted.

For awhile now I’ve been attempting to reflect this on my “after page.”

I would guess this page of links probably comes across as overwhelming to many people. But it’s part of my journey of both becoming myself, and also striving to connect with others with similar interests. It’s also a good design challenge to figure out how to try and share my complex personality as it is reflected on the social web, visually and clearly.

Best of luck to you in the semester and years to come!

Additional notes:

• Here is the direct link to my comment on Allysia’s post on their class WordPress blog (it’s currently in a moderation queue)
• In addition to sharing a little via Zoom with Dean’s grad students last semester, I also had a chance to share some resources and links with Alice Barr‘s virtual high school students in Maine who were / are studying to possibly become teachers. I created a video, “Classroom Management Digital Tips for Middle School Teachers” in advance of that Zoom session, which may also be of interest.