For today’s class we had a wonderful presentation and discussion about privacy, safety and online citizenship with guest speaker, Jesse Miller. Some of the topics he covered included: digital identity, digital literacy, network citizenship, privacy and consent, technologies role in education, and several more.

I really enjoyed Jesse’s presentation to our class because he covered concepts that were extremely applicable and relevant to us as future educators. A topic that specifically resonated with me was the idea of digital footprints, and the content that would come up if someone was to Google my name. While completing my undergraduate program I also played varsity basketball, and within my role of a student-athlete we were tasked with being positive representatives online. This meant being aware of our audiences as well as posting and supporting content that was appropriate and respectful. Now, as I work towards becoming a teacher, these same principles will apply, and at a greater intensity. When Jesse highlighted that our future students and students parents’ would most likely look us up online, it made me grateful for the online awareness that’s been instilled in me as a student-athlete. I never want to be in a situation where my values, character or ability to teach comes in to question because of inappropriate online content that I’m associated with.

As per our To-Do list, I took some time today to explore my digital footprint online to see what I could find. I was happy and relieved to see that most of the content was related to MRU basketball, and my social media accounts are all respectful and appropriate (there are just a few goofy photos of me here and there, but I think that makes me relatable as a teacher…?). It was also interesting to explore Google Images because I came across pictures of my friends and family even if I wasn’t in the photo. There were even a few basketball websites that had my roster information and statistics that I had never seen before that appear to be European Women’s Basketball websites. I find the internet very intimidating for this reason because while I think I have control over the content I am posting, there can be a lot of information out there that gets created and shared that we don’t know about. Overall, Jesse was a great resource for our class and I really appreciated his presentation.