“Digitial Identity represents the identity of an individual or groups of individuals based upon their web presence, multimedia images, audio, video.” As mentioned by Common Sense Education “We define who we are”. According to the Government of Canada, “As we spend more of our time in the virtual world, the security and validity of our digital identity become increasingly important. Knowing exactly who or what we are dealing with allows us to navigate online more safely. We take for granted the ability to confirm who we’re interacting with when it’s happening face to face.”
I am from a country, which is still developing digitally when it comes to gaining knowledge about digital citizenship. People are still learning about getting digitally literate. As I talk about my past Digital Identity, I was not much aware of this terminology, never thought how to secure my digital identity, not even searched my name on Google and when I did last week, I realized my name is unique that anyone can find me easily. So I should be careful while posting anything online. As mentioned by Amanpreet, in her blog about Digital theft. I totally agree as most of the people in our country (India) are ignorant about cybercrimes. Over 59% of Indian adults fell victim to the growing number of cybercrimes in the past year, said a report by cyber security software company, Norton Lifelock.
As I started learning about Digital Citizenship and as discussed digital identity in our last class, it made me think about how I am creating my username and passwords, I should think before posting anything on social media, keep a balance between my private and public space. In my present activities, I am trying to keep a view about the terms and conditions of any new app I am downloading or anyone I am using from my past. Even though Digitalization has made our lives easy, we can do our daily tasks very easily online. However, keeping it safe and secure is also very important and is a big question too.
It is also very important and being a parent and an educator it’s our duty to keep our children safe from this digital environment. Providing them with proper guidance and educating them in a fun-filled way helps them in gaining that knowledge. In my workplace, YMCA of Regina Daycare, we use an app called ‘Weemarkable’ where we post children’s day-to-day play experience and activities done by students. To secure the identity, when we post a group activity we prefer to blur the faces of children to provide a safe and secure digital environment.
Children and youngsters are the most easily adaptable to the changes that occurred following the impact of the technological development of the past few decades as many of them grew up in family and school environments that were abundant in digital equipment (Palfrey & Yasser,2008). For the ., net generation”, the places of socialization have thus moved from the schoolyard or playground to social websites or personal blogs, which allow children, unlike face to face communication, to continuously model, transform, and adapt their identities or personalities, as well as to experiment with different identities (Goldman, Booker, &McDermolt,2008). There are not many norms and values when children are involved digitally. So, to secure them Common sense education shares a Self-Awareness approach where students will reflect on the most important parts of their identities and how they relate to their activities. From selfies to social media many of us create unique online identities for ourselves, and our students are no different. But do kids always understand how others might perceive? What do they post? Helping students to think critically about the online identities they’re creating. Great lesson plans are designed by Common Sense Education. https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship/topic/digital-footprint-and-identity
Thankyou!
Gunpreesh kaur
i completely agree with you, if am talk about India, people from rural area has very less knowledge about digital tools, they don’t even know the meaning of digital identity and because of that they lose their digital identities easily. therefore, along with digital tools, awareness regarding their digital identities should be provided. moreover i really like the concept of Weemarkable’ where students can do their daily activities without any problem.
Its good to blur the faces of children and hide their identity. Hackers can be anywhere and as a teacher its our duty to prevent the identity of our students. Also, we should not forget about Offline theft. My question is: How you maintain the privacy of the classroom as I can see that the classroom is clearly visible and these pictures are posted online.
Being an educators we have always tried and will always try to make sure our kid’s digital identity should be kept protected. To maintain privacy, access to see the pictures is only given to parents and they can only see their child’s profile, not any other student from the classroom.
Lots of great points here, Gunpreesh! I agree that I should start to read (or at least skim) Terms and Conditions. It is such an ingrained action to just skip to the “Accept” button. Since exploring this topic of digital identity and keeping it secure, I have started using the Bitwarden website that Alec mentioned last class to store my passwords. I have also begun changing all of my passwords over to ‘strong passwords’ that Google suggests. I will admit, I have a few common passwords I used across all sites, and I now realize how dangerous this can be if hackers can break into multiple accounts with one password. Shielding students and children when making online posts is also a current practice I use; it is great to be able to share our classrooms and children’s learning, but we have to do so responsibly. It’s my goal to start asking students if I can take their picture to ensure I have their consent.
Hi Gunpreesh! I appreciate your perspective of digital identity within India. We often assume that other parts of the world have the same digital experiences as us however that is not often true. The world seems to be more full of scams whether it be online, phone or text they are everywhere! And we have to be able to spot them for our own safety. Our children’s safety is definitely, the most important too and I have to be careful when posting pictures of students online. If they don’t have their media form clearances signed by their parents to be posted on external websites then I have to make sure that students’ face isn’t in the photo or that they are blurred out. Looking forward to your future posts!
I too have been thinking a lot lately about spending more time and effort reading the terms of services, or any of the agreements that are attached to things that we too often quickly press the ‘accept’ button for. I just received a new credit card in the mail after my last one was frauded, and started to read the agreement. I couldn’t believe that it was 16 pages long. A lot of it was so heavily masked with legal jargon that I started to feel a bit nervous about what I was really signing up for. If I really took the time to read more of them, I am sure I would be surprised by some of the information I would find.