Blog Post #2: The Wide World of Digital Identity, Our Presence on the Internet and Personalized Learning

Chase, thank you for sharing your thoughts about digital identity, online presence, and personalized learning!

I enjoyed reading about the very practical ways of creating, differentiating, and protecting one’s professional and personal digital identities. Your digital visitor and resident map caught my attention as I haven’t seen a tool like this before. I can see how useful it would be to learn about our online habits this way, particularly since we often have a skewed sense of how we spend our time. I wonder how many people underestimate the time they spend on social media. When we spend an evening with friends or pass an hour in an engaging lecture, time seems to slip away quickly, with the event over before we are ready to move on. No wonder online social connection is so hard to let go of, even if we want to.

I appreciated, as well, your tips on caution around our digital footprints. I do find it hard to keep up with privacy settings and app permissions. They frequently change without notice, and it is time consuming to constantly read through policies and check on permissions. In light of concerns around privacy and security, it really is important to stay on top of what information about ourselves we share.

Finally, thank you for sharing your perspective on learning approaches. It sounds like you enjoy having room to freely grow in your areas of interest and benefit from self-created structure when you need to learn things that aren’t intrinsically motivating.