For someone who doesn’t know Jordan, figuring out who the real Jordan Puscus would not be an easy feat to get to the bottom of. Lucky for me, I do know who Jordan is through a few social events and a mutual friend, however, for someone looking to get the dirty details about Jordan, they would be hard pressed to find any. I started by delete Jordan off of Facebook to really see if I could find any information about him without cheating. To say that this was a challenge would be an understatement. Once I deleted him off of Facebook, there was no trace of his account. Through Google, I could not find much personal information on him, however, I was able to find a little bit of information… Jordan sits as the Vice-President for Regina Catholic Services, he is also the Secretary for the Regina Touch Football league. Other than that, I was only able to find small accounts of Jordan through Google such as his Twitter (which I was already followling) as well as some Spotify playlists that he has as public. Safe to say that if you google Jordan Puscus, you will not find much other than a few professional details.

Where I found most of my information about Jordan was on his blog. Jordan was blessed to be born with a twin brother, he has a social work degree and a masters. He has a wife who is a teacher and he has a daughter. If you would like more details on Jordan’s life, feel free to browse his blog at your leisure, but as far as being an internet sleuth goes, there is not much information available about Jordan that he isn’t willing to share via his own free will.

Digital Identity

As we begin to explore Digital Identity, it is interesting to know that most people actually have multiple social media accounts, on multiple social media platforms. Sometimes, with more than 1 per social media platform. While I say that this is interesting, it is also not surprising to me at all… As I am one of those people. I use Twitter primarily to get most of my news, more I mostly go on Twitter for sports news rather than political news, although I get a mix of both. I have several Twitter accounts, Instagram accounts and Reddit accounts. Most of which you would never be able to find unless you had access to my phone. These accounts are used, as Nicole Lee suggested in her article Having multiple online identities is more normal than you think, to share different opinions and interests that not all of my regular follows on my personal account would be interested in. Rather than flooding different feeds with posts about niche topics, I have chosen to separate my interests with different accounts on different platforms.

Using different account can also be helpful for other reasons. Someone might have some controversial views and opinions that they do not want associated with their personal self. Using a second account or “burner” accounts could be helpful in sharing very controversial opinions while minimizing the risk of people knowing who is the real person behind those thoughts. Be careful though! One would be cautious when switching between these accounts as there have been cases of some high profile figures posting certain opinions or messages while forgetting to switch to burner accounts… *cough cough* Kevin Durant *cough cough*.

Jon Ronson shares an interesting story during a TED talk, which I have shared below, about Justine Socco, who sent out a tweet that was meant to be a bit of a joke but ended up being catastrophic for her life and career. A quick lapse of judgement, that Justine most likely thought not many people would see, turned into the most trending tweet on Twitter at the time. With the emergence of cancel culture, people and especially celebrities, need to be as cautious as ever with what they share. The slightest misstep could prove to be catastrophic to any life or career.

I believe that digital literacy is super important in the classroom. While teachers are teaching students how to do proper research and to find trustworthy news outlets, it is important that teachers shows students what that really looks like.

As Damon Brown mention is his “How to choose your news” TEDtalk , There are so many outlets available that it is tough to know what is real news and what is not. While they are so many to choose from, the amount of information can sometimes leave us less informed than before we started reading or listening because it is hard to know what is real and what is fake.

Another TEDtalk by Noah Tavlin called “How false news can spread”, Talks a lot about fake news and branches off of what Brown said in his TEDtalk. The way that fake news floats around is incredible and the internet makes this much more prevalent. With so many contradictory opinions around and people trying to prove their points, it is hard to find the origin of most information, and most elementary students do not have the skills, nor the patience to figure that out. It also brings up the idea of researching articles that prove what we want to prove instead of simply proving the truth, which also causes a lot of issues in society when fake news is so prevalent.

I do try my best when it comes to teaching about digital literacy in my classroom and I often enjoy getting new up to date ressources to use. The New York Times lesson is an interesting one that I believe students would really find engaging. It also shows how easy it is for a news outlet to be convincing and act as a true and trustworthy source. I will definitely look into using this lesson plan in my own class going forward!

The NCTE Framework is a really good resource for educators to learn about what students are learning and why students  are learning about digital literacy. I really enjoy that the website almost lays things out like outcomes or “I can statements”

It focuses on how students can work to figure out what sources are good and reliable, while also teaching educators about the different strategies that websites might use to sway readers into believing that their information is true. This is another resource that I will be using when I focus on digital literacy with my students.