Crafting Your Digital Identity

We present ourselves differently to different audiences. Think about how the version of yourself you share with your grandparents vs. your friends, or how you use social media platforms differently depending on which friends and followers you have there. If you use Facebook, for instance, you probably use it very differently from how you use Snapchat!

Your ePortfolio is also a space for you to curate, to decide how to represent yourself to this audience. Right now, that audience includes your teachers and classmates, but you might also think about your community partner, friends and family you share it with, and potential employers. What version of yourself do you want to share in that space?

Here are some guiding questions to start thinking through your digital identity on your ePortfolio.

  1. Make a list of the social media platforms you’re active on.
  2. Who are you speaking to (or listening to) on each one? What communities are you participating in?
  3. What do you share about yourself on each platform? What do you keep private?
  4. Think about CODES as a digital community of colleagues. What information do you want us to know about you?

Aesthetic

This site is yours, and you’re welcome to customize the look and feel so that it better represents you! Change the default header image and play around with other customization settings. Your site’s aesthetic is a powerful tool for shaping how people engage with your content.

Revision

You’ll change a lot over your four years at SIUE. It’s very possible that by the time you’re a junior, the things you wrote as a freshman won’t be accurate anymore. Each semester, as you create your new portfolio pages for your classes, take that opportunity to revisit your About Me and other pages, updating as needed.

Privacy

Sometimes you’ll put things on your ePortfolio that are necessary for class, but are maybe personal things that you don’t want to share with the whole world. Feel free to use WordPress’s privacy settings and control who has access to your materials. You can also change those settings as you go along. Making a page private is a good alternative to deleting it — you’ll want to keep all your materials in your ePortfolio in case you need to reference them later, but they don’t all have to be publicly available.