Vanity Search

What does your digital footprint look like? This is an opportunity to explore your digital presence. The more you are involved in online communications, the greater your digital footprint can become. It is important that you do this before you start to set up additional accounts for this class and interact in these spaces. You will have a chance to explore how your digital footprint changes over time as you interact in new spaces. This is important for you to understand as you will need to be able to help students understand the importance of being aware of their own digital footprints. This is a simple thing to do. Simply go to Google and enter your name in quotes. Then explore the results. Make sure you look at the returns for web pages, photos and videos. Take notes on what you find and reflect on what it means for the way you use the web and how you are represented. You will then write a post in your blog (Instructions for Blog are below) that addresses what you learned in your first vanity search.

Scary! I have often Googled myself for other reasons such as boredom or maybe vanity (that one time when I watched the show Catfish). <side eye> Anyhow, I am okay with my results or should I say that I am not surprised by anything. Listed was my current blogs and one from 2007 that I had forgotten about, my FB information and pictures from that site, local news article, a couple of Prezis that I made AND information about me and my current position at UNT and MY SALARY along with start date and my position title. I know that information is available to the public but should't you have to actually search for it? It's literally at the click of enter after searching my name. Interesting!  In the end, I think that I use the web cautiously and that I am represented very well. (clearly compensation is another story)