Web 2.0: My Digital Footprint
Search 1:
Thankfully, a search of my name in quotes "Mackenzie Miller" did not turn up anything about me for the first 12 pages.Search 2:
A search for "Mackenzie B Miller" found my TikTok page (@mackenzie.b.miller) which has a total of 1 post, 10 followers and 2 likes, representing a rather small digital footprint.
Search 3:
Next, I started adding some descriptors. Both "Mackenzie Miller" with "engineer" and "Mackenzie Miller" with "teacher" brought up my LinkedIn profile, but not much else. My LinkedIn profile has 323 connections, mostly professional or work related, and shows a brief about me with my job history. While "Mackenzie Miller" with "circus" found my LinkedIn and also several images of me doing flying trapeze and a couple circus-related interviews I've done over the years.
Search 4:
Next, I tried some proper nouns to go with my name. "Mackenzie Miller" with "Hockaday" (the school where I teach) brought up my Meet-the-Faculty profile on the school's website and LinkedIn, but little else. "Mackenzie Miller" with the names of some of my former engineering employers brought up some Business Wire news blasts about engineering project updates and construction timelines. "Mackenzie Miller" with "TAMUC" finally found my YouTube channel, which has a total of 6 subscribers, 19 videos and 357 views (again, a relatively small footprint compared the more viral masses).
Search 5:
Next, I tried searching more specifically for sites where I know there is information about me. I tried "Mackenzie Miller" with both "Facebook" and "Instagram" and neither search located my account amongst the presumably much more popular Mackenzie Miller's out there. My Facebook account has 1.4K friends, but I keep my setting on private and curate my friends list enough that it's predominantly people I know socially and not work or business contacts. My Instagram account is an even more selective crew with only 372 followers, mostly family and closer friends.
Conclusions and Reflections:
Overall, I'm not upset with this relatively small public digital footprint. When I began teaching, one of my first steps was to cut down on the accessibility of information about me online because it was stressed to me that having a larger personal presence on social media was inconsistent with being "professional" as a teacher.
Since then times and policies have changed some. For instance, now the science department has it's own Instagram account where we can post photos and videos showing what our students are learning, doing and making in the classroom. Perhaps it's now becoming more socially acceptable to portray professional settings and achievements on previously social-only websites?
I'm curious to see how the incorporation of Web 2.0 into the classroom blends some of these previously social-only platforms into more educational ones. YouTube has certainly become more popular in the classroom over the years, and I share many science-related videos posted there with my students.
However, most of the Web 2.0-type sharing my students and I do is behind the access-protected walls of education specific software. For example, our school website is privately hosted and edited through Blackbaud. As a Microsoft campus, all of our Microsoft 365 accounts are linked to our school logins, including collaborative classroom tools like OneNote Classnotes, sharing teaching videos through Stream, peer commenting on student micro-vlogs through Flip.
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