We are asked to blog about our digital identities in reference to my past, present, and future, along with my own children’s identities, I will focus mainly on my present knowing that my past and future still play a huge role.
Thinking about digital identity is complex, it is considering and analyzing where I am leaving my digital fingerprint and what it says about me and what I am already leaving about my children.
To preface part of my discussion I want to start with this video:
Present:
I know we have all fallen to some of these password protection errors and some point. I am noticing the increase in digital identity protection in multiple areas of my personal and work life. When I think of my identity I think of protecting it and how much of a headache this can be at times. Which leads me to yesterday… oooh yesterday… I hope you enjoy the humor in this or you can make a connection. Yesterday, I wanted to get into my account on CRA, you know many of us head to this site once or twice a year, tax season and all. I just needed to check one small thing, see if a tax document was available yet. Do you think that I remembered all the information needed to get onto my account? Nope. Here I was running around my house looking for this document for a number, finally getting on and then realizing I did not change my address and now I have locked myself out of my account due to a security breach and need to contact CRA to get back in. Once I authenticated my identity with the nice lady on the phone I was now needing to regain access to my online account which required bank information, address, birth date, last years income tax number line XXXX, then I had to enter in my phone number, get an 2 factor authentication number to enter and then finally I was able to access my account only to realize I need another number to gain full access to my account which will be sent in the mail. SERISOUSLY??? I appreciate protecting my identity but UGH. Then I had to make my way to the Canada Student Loan website as well which has similar identity protection set up. In my personal life I access many websites and without using a password saver there would be huge amounts of frustration and tons of password resets.
Work has also recently increased its protection and now requires us to authenticate ourselves when logging on to a variety of multiple different platforms (for example Edsby). This again helps with protection but comes with inconvenience and requires that I have access to my phone to get that special code. If it was not for my smart watch that I can see the text message on I could spend precious teaching moments looking for my phone which could be in my lunch kit in the staff room fridge (yes it has happened, more then I want to admit), in my car, my purse, my jacket, on my desk, on the back table where my son was playing on it before school, etc. Authenticating myself throws me off sometimes, it makes me feel unprepared and scattered, but more importantly it can interrupt the flow of my teaching and I let my frustration show sometimes. However I am evolving and learning from this class and I should take these moments and turn them into teaching moments about the importance of digital identity. The teaching moment is literally presenting itself and I should be seizing the opportunity to use it.
Alec said to think about if you were to die and your last 3 posts define who you are as a person, what does that say about you? So let’s take a look:
Twitter:
Facebook:
TikTok (you only get one video)
Based off of my 3 last posts on Twitter and my last 3 posts on Facebook in my comments let me know who you think I am? What does my digital identity in these posts say who I am? Be honest with me! I won’t be offended (much haha).
My present identity in these platforms are very different then each other. They each show a side of who I am, sides of myself that I am willing to share; pieces of my digital identity. It has definitely evolved over time but through its evolution I am becoming more aware of the fingerprints I am leaving behind. I am also becoming more aware of the fingerprints of my children that I am leaving behind; I did not give that a second thought but I sure am now.
Thank you Alec for inspiring my post this week!