One of the toughest things about my journey since I came to the United States has been managing my varying identities. About a year after I arrived here, I became a wife and mother. Then I went back to school to get my degrees. I was still a second-language learner at the time – I still am by the way, so forgive me for any errors that you see – trying to manage being all the other “people” in different contexts.
I am not saying that other people don’t have to manage varying identities. But I am experiencing a different phenomenon because of technology.
Since I moved to Bakersfield, I maintained a website. Because I found a great deal for my domain name, I was able to maintain a professional looking website with a personalized domain. But the site was mostly for my students who wanted to know what was going on in my class while they were absent. No one other than my students looked at my website, so I had to keep it looking friendly toward my population of high schoolers.
I spent about two years maintaining it as a class website, accumulating various artifacts along the way. However, I am starting to see that my website needs to be a professional website to help me cultivate a more sophisticated online presence. Since attending the 2013 DML Conference, it has beoame clear to me that I need to put my ideas about education and my project out in the world, so that people can read about them if I ever wanted to be considered seriously as a researcher and a doctoral student. At the same time, I still need a student friendly website for my students.
But how does one maintain that separation? I can barely find the time to write a class blog. Now I want to write about my research interest and my readings while writing all of that for the forums so I can pass my own classes at Pepperdine.
I suppose sleep is for the weak? But seriously. Someone find me more time! Please!
Kip Glazer's Blog 