Honestly, I have never put a whole lot of
thought into my online reputation. This could be from living in some kind of Korean
bubble for the past few years but I have always thought that life at work and outside of work are kind of separate
realms, what someone does outside their place of employment shouldn't really
have any relevance to their professional life and vice versa. While there is an
obvious line drawn at criminal activity, other behaviour can get blurry. As people
share more and more of their lives online, this is becoming an issue with a lot
of professions, especially with teachers.
While I have never had a problem with my online reputation, if someone who didn't know me was to judge me based on some of the things I say or
post on Facebook, my bad jokes and sarcastic comments might not come across that well (to say nothing of the few hazy norebang videos
that might be out there). If a future employer or student’s parent were to do a
search on me, it might only be my Facebook profile that pops up.
As we move through this course I am staring to
realize that putting more of myself online professionally can only benefit my
career as an educator. Creating an online resume and profile are the obvious first
step, but getting involved in the community of educators through Twitter and
the different networks of blogs seems to me to be the best course, long term. Besides
creating a reputation for myself, the two way dialog will help me educate
myself and add to the pool of resources I can use with my students.
It is probably fortunate for me that this is
the course I have started with for this masters program. It gives me the opportunity
to move forward with the rest of the program with this kind of mentality and
improve my digital footprint as I move forward.
Like you, I also haven't given that much thought about my digital footprint. It seems like we have to have multiple accounts in order to separate our private lives from our professional ones. I try to separate my work life from my personal life, so why not do the same on social media? Employers would probably argue that we are trying to hide something but I disagree. There are too many people out there that put their entire lives online and that is their own personal choice, but I prefer not to.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your bubble, I was completely ignorant to the fact that employers would even think to look at our online reputation. It seems like it`s wrong for work and private lives to coexist. I support your notion that they should be separate. We now know this is not the case and we both have been given the opportunity to take advantage of this fact and build strong foundations.
ReplyDeleteInteresting post and comments. I would argue that you can no longer separate personal and professional. It all blends whether you like it or not. This post http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/3432 gives a pretty compelling argument.
ReplyDelete