Digital Technologies and Identity

In today’s world, there are a large variety of digital technologies. Digital technologies play huge roles in the way our society operates, especially when it comes to being able to create digital identities. The control that we have when it comes to creating digital identities by being able to choose the content that we share comes with many benefits. People can share the best sides of themselves and are able to stay up-to-date with how others are doing, without having to have a conversation with them. Despite the many benefits, digital technologies and identities can come with many drawbacks. For example, people can create fake profiles and catfish people into dangerous situation, which has been a very common way predators have been able to prey on their targeted audiences. Additionally, many harmful ideations have also been created and photoshop can make it impossible to know what is edited versus what is real.

Although digital identity is a large part of how people use digital technologies, it is not the only way. Digital technologies are also being used for everyday tasks such as banking, shopping, tracking health and fitness, navigation, and so much more.

Using Digital Platforms in Education

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/digital-learning-what-you-need-know-2021-students-panda

The use of digital platforms in education has proven to be an amazing tools for students and educators. There have been so many platforms created to assist with learning. Some of my personal favourites throughout my years of education as a student have been Kahoot, Khan Academy, Canva, and Quizlet. Canva is my go to platform whenever I need to create a poster or make a fun study sheet, as it offers fun templates, icons, and more. Khan Academy helps to give detailed explanations of course content that I missed or had difficulty understanding. It provides content for a variety of subjects, I have mainly used it for my different science course such as Biology, Chemistry, and Biochemistry. Last but not least, I enjoy using Quizlet and Kahoot to help test and memorize content for tests or exams. Kahoot is fun to use with friends who are studying for the same class, as you do not need to be physically with them and it makes learning the content fun to engage with and adds some competitive aspects.

The Role of the Instructor and Social Presence in Online Learning

https://teaching.resources.osu.edu/teaching-topics/online-instructor-presence

As we have spoken and read about throughout this course, it is extremely important for instructors to maintain a positive social presence within online classes. As spoken about in our reading, there are 2 primary functions in teaching presence, which are design and facilitation. Although design is very important as it includes the organization, content, and structure of the course, facilitation is equally important and often over looked. facilitation is creating and maintaining a good social presence, which reinforces learning through communication, prompts, feedback, and understanding. One quote that really stood out to me from the reading linked above is, “Most of my instructors demonstrated a strong presence during the course, which intensified my own social presence and desire to learn.” This really emphasizes the importance of teaching presence from a students perspective; how it is able to increase students desire to engage with and motivate them to learn the content.