A Teaching Moment: Introducing Students to their Cyber-selves
Every term I struggle with a conversation I have with my students at the start of the class. Because I teach about social media, I have a frank discussion with my undergraduate students about protecting their reputation. This term, I did something a little different.
I have only 17 students in my class, so the weekend before the first day of class I took a few hours and did a little online research. I spent about 10 minutes per student, digging through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other Web resources to find out what I could about their online identities. I took that information and put together a presentation introducing the class to their fellow students based solely on the facts that I could find online.
When I announced that instead of a typical get-to-know-you activity, I was going to show them what a future employer might find if they were checking them out as part of a hiring decision there were some nervous murmurs. However, as we went through the slides and discussed each student’s personal brand there were lots of good-natured laughs and some rueful grins. Several students learned that photos and comments they had thought were private were actually accessible to the public.
At the close of the exercise I invited the students to take 10 minutes to find out everything they could about me by surfing the Web. To my surprise, several students dug up an old Friendster profile that I had assumed was wiped out. My brilliant lesson turned out to be a true teaching moment. As someone who specializes in social media and reputation management I thought I had a pretty secure handle on my online brand. But even I need to stay on top of my social media presence.
This New Year, I resolve to Google myself regularly, delete outdated profiles and develop a cohesive online personal brand. I may be the social media professor, but my students taught me a big lesson.
Similar Posts:
- Ethical Concerns of Teaching with Facebook
- Social Media Engagement: Should Teachers and Students Be Friends?
- A Teaching Moment: Survey Monkey as a Tool for Peer Assessment
- Trashing the Textbook Saves Money, Costs Time
- Reaching Students: The Evolution of E-Communication
12 Comments
Laura
Thursday, 21st January 2010 at 11:20 am
I am stealing this assignment. I start teaching social media to my students next week–they’re all future teachers–and I would love to show them what can be found. I do google myself fairly often, but haven’t really dug through the results as thoroughly as I might. Your post is also a good reminder to do that.
@judypdrsn
Thursday, 21st January 2010 at 1:03 pm
I think this is a great idea. How did you search for students? Using their real names? What about student aliases?
Karen
Thursday, 21st January 2010 at 1:53 pm
Add my name to the I’m Stealing This List. Thanks.
Katie Stansberry
Friday, 22nd January 2010 at 1:16 am
I’m glad to see this idea is catching on.
@judypdrson – All I had on the students was the class list with their full names so I used their real names and sometimes common nicknames. For example, if a student was named “Jessica” I would also search for “Jess” and “Jessi”. It really didn’t take long to find everyone.
Kate Wallace
Saturday, 23rd January 2010 at 10:04 pm
As a subject of this experiment I must admit that I was caught off guard when I sat down and heard the announcement that Katie “spent the weekend getting to know us.” I instantly thought of my Facebook pictures and what she would think about them. I thought I was good at maintain a semi-professional yet semi-fun representation of my online identity. During class, I was made aware that what college students might not consider inappropriate, future employers and teachers may think otherwise.
Tori Misell
Sunday, 24th January 2010 at 11:03 pm
As one of Katie’s students, I was extremely nervous when she announced she would be showcasing what could be found about me online. I know most of my Facebook is set to private, but I didn’t know what was going to be revealed to my class about me.
As it turns out, mine was not all that bad. However, Katie was able to find out that I won 3rd in State for Dance Team in High School dancing to Marilyn Manson’s “Tainted Love”.
Katie did introduce an interesting point to me though. Why is my online presence so private? Because I am going into a field that works very closely with social media, I need to be able to show that I am involved with it.
Overall, this was a very interesting experiment, and I really enjoyed it! Not one of my previous teachers has ever done this!
Kyla Morris
Sunday, 24th January 2010 at 11:33 pm
I was also a student in Katie’s class and had to deal with the ten minutes of waiting nervously for my online profile to be exposed. When I heard facebook pictures were about to be placed on a rather large screen in front of the entire class, my mind began to scan through all the pictures I had posted. It turned out that I had a very private profile and therefore a limited online presence. I learned that having a very private facebook and almost non-existent online presence isn’t exactly a good thing. The idea is to have a professional online presence that incorporates some of your personality. After just a few weeks in Katie’s class my online presence is much improved and even expanded beyond facebook to blogs and twitter.
Keep track of and build your online presence everyone! Thanks for the reality check Katie.
- Kyla M.
Pilar Wyman
Monday, 25th January 2010 at 12:25 pm
Brilliant.
Just call me another Internet thief.
Thanks for posting!
Christina (MrsDi)
Monday, 25th January 2010 at 11:21 pm
Fantastic! I’m on the “stealing this” list too.
Last trimester I worked with middle school kids on their Digital Footprints. They all got on http://snitch.name/ and found each other, their parents, etc. Amazing the amount of info available, some of these kids had large footprints already.
This video also had a big impact, Digital Dossier http://www.digitalnative.org/MediaProjects/DigitalDossier/
Holly
Wednesday, 27th January 2010 at 1:02 am
What a wonderful idea! Add me to the list too! Great lesson for everyone!
Michele Lorito-Chase
Thursday, 4th February 2010 at 3:04 am
A fantastic teaching tool! I was brought here after browsing the Social Media Club blog, specifically SMCEDU. This is quite a useful tool, not only in educating the “student”, but educating clients who often do not readily recognize themselves as students. This could be helpful in the client’s all important realization as it pertains to understanding Social Media.
Nancy
Tuesday, 9th February 2010 at 11:11 pm
Great idea!
How do you delete profiles you do not want displayed?
Leave a Comment