Vanity Search

“Mrs. Rainey, Mrs. Rainey! You’re on the internet”. Half curious and half mortified I answered back calmly “I am?” This was my first experience with my digital footprint. My 5th graders finding a picture of me after winning a drawing at my school.  I had told them to search for my school website since I had attached helpful links there. Under google images there I was smiling from ear to ear with my Chick-Fil-A gift card.  I was so glad that was the image they had found and I wondered what else was out there?

For this week’s adventure, I did just what my 5th graders did last year after being prompted to find my website.  On the google browser, I typed “ America Rainey”. There at the top of the list was my linkedin.com account. At first look, I am very impressed with myself. It shows I am attending grad school and where I have worked since the beginning of my work. But then I get a little weary, everybody can see this. Could someone other than a future employer use all this information against me? I keep going down the list and I see that I am a homeowner as property taxes are public record and it shows on a map exactly where the house is. Yikes! This means my students or anybody can find me at any time. Further down the list, I see a hair salon. I left them a really nice review.  The review makes me look like a caring person with a positive attitude. My journey continues with evidence of me replying to several blogs and my enrollment in TCCA  Edcamp, a professional development I attended last October. I did also run into an unfinished portfolio I had started on as part of this coursework. I do not like it at all, I will have to take that down. It makes me look like an amateur at Webdesign. My journey continues and I find my Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.  A Pinterest post about word walls, a Facebook post about women empowerment, and my last tweet was a response to “What is your favorite multiplication times table?”  It was a math teacher father asking on behalf of his 15-year-old daughter.  I said 6 * 8 = 48 because it rhymes and he had given me a like.  I went through eleven pages of Google results. I am 49 years old and the earliest record I found as I dug through historical records and family trees was my marriage at age 27. I did not discover much about my military service.  Since watching week 1 video Web 2.0…The Machine is Us/ing Us, I learned that WE are the internet and we are the ones that make the connections. So, I suppose I need to go create those connections. Overall, the way I use the web is in an educational and public records way.  From Blogposts to the images posted I am represented with dignity and I will continue to strive to come across as a life long learner that supports others positively.