This week in #edtc300 we got to do something I am very comfortable with - cyber sleuthing or creeping. So as I creep others on the internet lots, I decided to take this prompt a little different. I decided I wanted to creep myself, with the help of people close to me. I asked my mom and a few friends to check me out, like we weren't friends or incognito, and see what they could find. I chose to do it this way because I am constantly creeping myself and want to see what others can see about me as the internet adjusts everything you see (check out my last post to read more). I actually began seriously creeping myself during my pre-internship (2017/2018) when my grade three students decided to google my teaching partner and I. They went straight to images and to my surprise there was a very old picture of me (which was not inappropriate) but I was standing close to a male. Students then started asking me questions and I was just so shocked that this image was on google. This situation really had me thinking what else I had made available on the internet. 2 good things did come out of this: 1st - I started to become more aware of my digital identity and presence online 2nd - I realized you can request to get an image taken off the page, which is exactly what I did. My request was approved and removed. Woohoo! So if you have an inappropriate or image you don't want to share/see on google, you can send in a request to remove it - click here to find the page Back to creepin' ... When my mom started to creep me, she wasn't really sure to start. She asked if just googling me was good and I just encouraged her to look wherever she could - but not on Facebook as we are friends. Right away she found my twitter account and followed me "just to really make sure" that I was being appropriate and for her to do her creeping job. With googling me she thought she found a youtube account, but turns out it was not mine. Another thing she came across was pieces of my educational portfolio, which took awhile to find. According to my mom - my digital presence is approved. Next I asked a few of my friends, which all happen to be very great cyber stalkers, to find all they can on me - I was prepared for the worst. However, they all came back with very little information on me. They found my educational twitter account and my twitter profile picture on google, but not much else. By their standards - my digital presence is approved. Lastly, when I creeped myself I started by going incognito, which 100% made me feel like a spy. I began my sleuthing by googling my name followed by Regina to try get the right one. I first looked at images. The first image that came up was my current twitter profile picture and that was about it. After looking through the images on google, I decided to search up my name followed by education next. The first thing that came up was a link to Facebook profiles of people named Kyla Wolfe, so that is where I looked. So this is what came up... which is definitely not me. I scrolled down to find more profiles with the same name as me as well. Even with scrolling through others with the same name I could not find my picture and account. I know my Facebook privacy settings are very high and this truly showed that. Next I decided to check out YouTube. I know I have an account where I can subscribe, like, comment, and post videos on it. But when searching I only found old dance videos of me that I was unaware were on YouTube. Besides those few videos I couldn’t see or find my account. After basic social media checking, I dug deeper in my education presence. When searching through I found old assignments from previous Ecs classes and different pieces from my educational portfolio. I thought this was great. The only part I didn’t find easily was my educational portfolio. After some digging and adjusting my searches I did come across it, but this is not something I want to be a challenge when googling me. Overall, along with my friends and family, my online presence is approved. I would of continued to agree and think that way, until last weeks class. It appears I am an undersharer. Now my opinions have changed and I want to change my digital citizenship and presence online. When investigating others, I realized that I enjoyed being able to find basic and professional information online. This has me thinking that I need to adjust my own privacy settings to build more of a professional and personal online identity. Without this class I would of thought the more private the better. Now my opinions have completely changed and I plan on becoming more open, but still safe on the internet. If you decide to creep yourself - decide what kind of digital identity you want to be sharing with the world.
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