Online Identity Crisis
I’ve got quite a few different names happening in cyberspace and I’m wondering if it’s too many? In some places I am technolote, in others it’s jessmc, or jess_technolote or fishkeeperswife (yep, my husband used to have a passion for keeping marine fish that was very time consuming) or even furrypenguin! Eek! Surely this is ridiculous? I think I need to have an identity that is usable both in the edublogger and personal spheres so that I don’t have to have different accounts for professional and personal use. When I started all this blogging it was with my site technoLOTE and so that is the identity I started with. Now, I’ve got a few other ideas about what I want to do and I’m not sure I just want to be known as technolote. I’ve got a couple of great projects coming up that have nothing to do with teaching LOTE which is why this conundrum has struck me. The name techolote won’t mean much for those projects. So, is it a good time to change some usernames around?
I think it’s important to separate yourself from what you do sometimes. I teach LOTE (Chinese) but that is not who I am. I find that at school both staff and students have a great deal of difficulty separating me as a person from my interest in Chinese and China. I went to a book club meeting a couple of months ago and I put a block of chocolate on the table to share, only to be immediately asked by a colleague ‘Is that Chinese chocolate?’ Why would it be? If it was a particular occasion like a cultural celebration day or something like that, then that question would almost be expected. When I take other classes as extras the kids think that just because I am the one who is taking them that means I am going to suspend all programs and teach them Chinese. They may think that of other subject teachers too, and I’m not suggesting it’s only me, but it is a bit frustraing. Like when I walked in to take a P.E extra: “Oh, does this mean we are going to play Chinese games?”
Not everything I do online, in life, at work or at home has got to do with my technoLOTE site or my teaching of and interest in China and Chinese language. I’m considering making sure I have an identity in all these spheres that points first to me as a person, rather than an occupation.
