Who's That Girl

Working in higher education for the past 5 years has been a very different and unique experience to my prior experience working in k-12 education (for 3 years).  This might seem fairly obvious, but one of the larger ways it differs is in relation to the public portion of my identity as an educator.  I find myself much more comfortable growing and sustaining an online personality and network as I work in higher education than I ever did in k-12, and in fact I find it vital to my professional growth, unlike during my experience as a high school teacher. 

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As part of an educational technology course I am taking, we were required to create an About Me section of our blogs or a social networking site that we would actually use.  I was nervous to begin this section of the course as I have always tried to keep my professional and personal online identities very separate, as I think is the case with most educators.  I also had no experience with Google+ and was a little overwhelmed by my inability to keep most of my profile incognito (I couldn't, for example, use just my last name).  However, in order to support this week’s NETS-T standard (this week's for me was: Standard 5d is to “contribute to the effectiveness, vitality, and self-renewal of the teaching profession”) and my own professional growth, I am finding it important to embrace a position of vulnerability, realizing that others will be judgmental always but hoping that the positives will outweigh the negatives of sharing my educational opinions online.

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 For class this week we read “The Future of Reputation; Gossip, Rumor and Privacy on the Internet” and a section that particularly resonated with me was the following, “Reputation is a core component of our identity – it reflects who we are and shapes how we interact with others – yet it is not solely our own creation . . . Our reputation depends upon how other people judge and evaluate us, and this puts us at the mercy of others.” (Solove, 2007, p. 33).  Taking into consideration that I have the ability to shape the content that others will be able to judge me on (here and on my About Me page), I am choosing to embrace this challenge of living in the internet public.  I considered just creating a LinkedIn account, and might still, but for the ease of linking everything through Google I went with them.

On my About Me page of my new Google+ profile I wrote that “I really believe in the power of education to transform lives and I believe it is our collective responsibility to ensure everyone has access to this power. One of the myriad of ways I participate in that notion is to write an educational blog focused on policy reform, literacy, ed tech, and higher education called A Memory of Words (after a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote).”  By writing that out and sharing it with others, I think it will hold me accountable to the notion that I have a larger purpose for sharing my thoughts on this blog.  I'm not just writing for a grade in this course or for the sake of listening to my own opinion but because I think it matters that we actively pursue positive change for education in this country.  If I can bear that in mind, I think I will find more comfort in my new online network. 

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Have you found balance in your personal and professional online networks?  Have you thrown in the towel and just consolidated both?  Does it matter?

Referenced:
Solove, D. (2007). The future of reputation. New Haven: Yale University Press.