I am the only person in the world (as far as I can tell) with my name. This makes googling me very interesting-you know that every hit of that search is going to be me. This has made me pretty wary of what is out there already, but as a teacher I am even more aware of my online presence and what people can dig up.
I don’t know if it is just my natural self absorption but I google myself fairly frequently-I like to see what is out there. We were encouraged to do so for this week’s class on online safety and while I have done this recently I had not done it yet with the lens of future teacher. I think that knowing what is out there and accessible is so important, especially in our roles as educators. Luckily, I have a pretty tight hold on what information is out there. BUT have you ever Google image searched yourself? I tried that today and was surprised at what I found. It is odd to see pictures of yourself that you did not know were out there. Luckily there were pretty innocuous, but it made me even more conscious about how to keep my privacy safe.
This week’s conversations about online privacy and etiquette were pretty scary and gave me a lot to think about. I feel better equipped now than I was before how to navigate the online sphere as a teacher. I think the fact that I am lucky enough to have grown up in a technological world, and for a long time I was that teen on the hot new social media platform gives me some insight into how teens are using their computers and at least gives me the language talk about these issues with kids.
