Digital reputation

Blogging does not come naturally to me, hence I am falling behind in my weekly quota! I think for me to feel at ease with my blog it needs to become one of the first things I open up when I turn on my computer so that it's always at the forefront of my mind. However at the moment that list goes as follows:

1. Facebook
2. Hotmail
3. Uni email
4. Twitter

However in my defense (and a side note about integrating technology) this is what has been my constant companion for the past week:

as has this:



But getting back to my first point, facebook is my first port of call on the net and despite my worries about it's privacy settings this hasn't changed.

However, I am more aware now than ever before about my online presence and how careful you need to be about the information you make public. This is something that children need to be made aware of, although I acknowledge that it is hard to expect young people to take seriously the possible future consequences of their online persona. My experience with facebook has shown me that there are some people who always take digital safety seriously, those who use pseudonyms in place of their surname and never post identifying information. However, there are those with no notion that the information they put out there is accessible by all and permanent; those who have public profiles, shameless pictures and controversial posts. I guess the difficulty is getting students to understand that anything that is posted publicly can be used against them at a future date. How do you really get young people to understand that their online presence affects their reputation? There have been numerous example recently of students punished for online content and perhaps this will encourage children to realise that anything published or put in print (via social networking or chat programs) is not the same as schoolyard chatter. It can have further reaching effects and far greater consequences.