My digital footprint has been very limited. When looking myself up on fire fox I found my Facebook account along with a bunch of other Facebook accounts for people with similar names. I also found an obituary page for a family with the same last name but not my family, which was weird, I will not be linking this page for the respect of that other family and also it feeling odd to link a totally different family’s obituary page. I am honestly proud of the results for my digital footprint, especially seeing that I am no longer linked to my old jobs page.
I afterwards decided to see if I had different results depending on the search engine, so I looked myself up on my phone using safari and had similar results, most of the Facebook pages were no longer on top, saw something attached to the College of the Rockies but when opening it I could not find were I was listed. Found a different obituary for a Jarabek but not someone I know. Searching up one of my old usernames brings up my art account which I think about if I should delete it, there is nothing bad on it I just am unsure if I want to continue to have my art on that platform when they had changed policy multiple times about if the site is using work on their site to feed ai art programs. There are still many accounts with a similar name to mine showing up which I know are not mine. It is definitely odd seeing so many people with similar names to mine especially since my first and last name with their particular spellings are not very common.
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It is important as a teacher to be aware of what your digital footprint is because of it being what shows who you are, and can give impressions to others on who you are as a person. Your digital footprint can show things that may cause people to not want you to be teaching their children or could give a contradictory idea to employers. It is also important to be aware of what others can easily find out about you online and be sure that that is information you are fine with being available. It is also important to be aware that if you are teaching older students that students can find that information themselves and being aware that they can find your social media accounts and may try to connect with you so being aware of having those accounts either private or really clean for that possibility.
This type of assignment to look at my digital footprint is definitely a challenge for me since I do find myself prone to becoming hyper vigilant about this type of thing rather easily so the suggestion of looking myself up fairly regularly I need to be very cautious or I will become obsessive about it all which would not be great for me as an individual.