Photo by Eliobed Suarez on Unsplash

The Internet

Have you ever googled yourself? Well, today I did just that. I was surprised to see the images that came up. Though some were from my competitive curling days, the majority were images from twitter that I had posted years ago. Back then these were images I thought I was just sharing with my friends/followers not the entire internet. And let’s just say that though these images are not inappropriate, they also do not reflect the professional role I am trying to assume.

Seeing these images that I had not seen in over ten years plastered on the internet, for anyone to see, had me thinking about how I plan to use social media going forward. While it is fun to share images of your trips or adventures it is important to ensure that the platform you are using has privacy settings in place, and does not share your images with the rest of the internet. And regardless of the privacy settings, once an image is put on the internet, does it ever really leave? After seeing the images of me on google, I quickly went into my twitter account and deleted the tweets that had these specific images. I then googled myself again, and though those posts had been deleted, the images still remained in my google search.

Social Media and Cell phone use in classrooms

Today we had Jesse Miller as a guest lecturer. He introduced us to the idea of allowing students the opportunity to use their phones for 2 minutes between each lecture. I love this idea, and if I end up teaching in a middle school where cell phone usage is a constant battle, I will definitely implement this technique. Taking phones away from students is a battle where I feel there is no winner, and ends up causing more problems and distractions in the class. So Jesse Miller’s idea of allowing students time between lectures is a great compromise.