Where's Shannon?

Can you find me?

Yep, that's me, fourth picture from the left. That's actually the only trace of *me* that shows on a google search. A day ago, I would have been happy. My goal was to have the digital footprint of a cloud. But after listening to George Couros' talk on digital identity, I'm not so sure.

In his talk, George Couros said that if we don't take charge of our digital identity, someone else will. In his case, somebody had posted a negative review about him on ratemyteacher.com. That was at the top of a google search about himself, until he created a more active presence online. Today, if you google his name, the top results are his twitter account, blog, and other things that he has control over.

So I realized that by generating positive material about yourself online, you can overcome things that other people put up (i.e., that awkward photo of yourself from grade seven).


That's one advantage of creating a digital identity, but it's a defensive play. An even greater advantage to building digital identity is being a role model to students of what is appropriate. As Couros mentioned, some youngsters post the wrong things for the wrong reasons. They need to see a positive example.

Finally, I've been learning, that connections and relationships really do happen online. I was skeptical of this at first. But as I've been reading my classmate's blogs, I've noticed that I keep commenting on certain ones. People are emerging as thinkers and practitioners who I want to be in touch with, and when I noticed that google reader is retiring on July 1, my first thought was, "how am I going to keep up with my teacher blogs?"

So what do I want to see when I google myself? Well, a flattering picture, for starters ;) All joking aside, I'd like my name to be connected with initiatives that I am proud of. I'm imagining pictures of a community garden, an EAL class, a humorous essay, etc. I'd love to hear from people I've never met and people I've always wanted to meet. And that's not going to happen as long as I'm a digital cloud.