Social Scholars

Abstract

The #WalkMyWorld project was an open, social media experiment developed to provide preservice and in-service teachers and K–12 students with an opportunity to focus on developing media literacies and civic engagement in online spaces. The study employed a basic interpretative qualitative study approach (Merriam, 2002) to examine how online social environments can be used as a vehicle to engage educators in the creation and sharing of online content, as it relates to multimodal meaning making, social scholarship, and identity construction. For this study, identity construction was identified as visually representing an aspect of an individual's life using any preferred medium, and sharing it through Twitter using the #WalkMyWorld hashtag. Results suggest three different categories in which participants viewed the activity of identity construction: (a) embraced similar identities, (b) established separate identities, or (c) resisted creating an online identity. As educators engage students with reading and writing digital content within social and connected learning environments, it is important to consider the creation and curation of an individual’s digital identity in social scholarship practices.