Managing Your Online Footprint

On June 16th, I participated in an online conference called PD in your PJs hosted by The State of Tech Podcast. The conference consisted on video streams that were captured live using Google Hangouts recently unveiled On-Air feature. The conference proved to be a great use for Google Hangouts and it also gave me the opportunity to talk with some really cool educators about a subject I feel is generally ignored in today's classrooms.

Despite spending up to 11 hours online each day, students still do not understand that what they do now will affect them forever. The Internet - Google especially - never forgets. It also fails to understand how elapsed time affects search results. This means the kid who adds pictures to his Flickr account showing off his beer pong prowess at his 18th birthday party is the same person 10 years later who has graduated from law school and passed the bar exam with flying colors. The beer pong picture and the picture of the grad standing with a proud mom and dad will appear on the same page of an image search. That's some scary stuff.

Everyone does stupid things as a kid. That's part of growing up. The danger now is that those stupid moments are saved eternally.

Below is the finished State of Tech podcast featuring our presentation on the topic of online identity and managing your online footprint. Enjoy!

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PD in your PJs Virtual Conference

I'm excited to announce that I have been selected as one of eighteen educators to present at the PD in your PJs Online Conference hosted by The State of Tech podcast on Saturday, June 16th from noon to 5pm EST. The conference will include 28 sessions on topics ranging from Google apps to tablet integration to BYOD deployment. Here's the cool part - the conference is completely free and will stream live for all the world to see. If you would like to watch, simply click on the live stream link on June 16th.

My presentation is titled Managing Your Online Footprint and will focus on the importance of maintaining a positive online identity. Complete presentation details are available here. In addition to watching the presentation, 9 lucky folks can join me in the video chat and contribute to the event. If you're interested, you can sign up here. Act fast - spots are limited!

See you on the 16th!

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The Problem isn't Facebook, It's the Users who Misuse

About three hours ago, I wrote a blog post about a class project I was working on where students had to create pretend Facebook pages for characters in S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. After posting, I hopped on Twitter to send the link out to my followers. Surprisingly, one of the recent tweets from someone who I follow also had to do with the topic of Facebook. It was a link to the ABC News story of 6 middle school girls arressted after creating a Facebook event titled “Attack a Teacher Day.” Needless to say, it was an interesting juxtaposition to my post proclaiming the value in harnassing the social network’s popularity among students.

This is a perfect opportunity for a teachable moment.

We must remember that the problem is not the technology, but those who use it maliciously. Back in the days of note-passing, you wouldn’t blame the pencil for a bit of slander scrawled on a piece of paper, would you?

It must be our job as educators and parents to be positive role models when dealing with social media. The solution to problems such as the girls in Nevada isn’t blocking Facebook – it’s educating students abut the difference between wrong and right on the web.

One silver lining to this – the article says the girls invited 100 people to the “Attack a Teacher Day” event. Only 18 responded. This means 82% either ignored it or deleted the invitation. Hopefully this is a sign of fledgling digital citizenship.

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Teachers - Beware of Your Digital Footprint

My middle school is only a few miles down the road from Niagara University, so it makes sense that we work closely with their school of education. Most of the student teachers in our building come from NU and we also participate in their Learn & Serve program. This is basically a pre-service mentoring and observation field experience opportunity that all education majors must fulfill. It's not as rigorous or time-consuming as student teaching, but the need for cooperating teachers is just as essential.

Yesterday, I received an email from an NU student who wrote to inform me that she had been assigned to my room as her Fall Learn and Serve placement. She went on to explain that even though her placement was supposed to be for a full day on a routine basis, she wanted to come for half a day on an irregular schedule because she had a full time job.

Sensing trouble, I copied and pasted this girl’s email address into Facebook and quickly discovered her account. Her wall was blocked, but this was of little use because the profile picture of her drinking with her friends was more than enough to confirm my suspicions. This was not the kind of pre-service teacher I wanted in my room.

This is not a unique story. Increasingly each year, professionals find themselves in difficult spots as a result of poor decisions with regard to their digital footprint.

So to all you pre-service teachers (all teachers, really) – be safe. And don’t take pictures of the stupid things that you do.

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