Web 2.0: Digital Footprint (Revisited)

This post is a follow-up to my original digital footprint search completed several weeks ago at the beginning of my Web 2.0 course. I revisited the searches I undertook originally, and then expanded my searches to include technologies that I experimented with during our Web 2.0 course.

Search 1:

As with my previous query, 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 LinkedIn and TikTok (@mackenzie.b.miller) pages, representing a slight increase in the results for this search, which previously only found my TikTok page.

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. 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, including a new interview that aired on the local Fox News station on January 23, 2023 and is now available on YouTube.

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" surprisingly did not turn up anything this time! Previously it found my YouTube channel. However, I have since changed some of my YouTube video settings to "unlisted" after learning more about how YouTube works. I assume that is why it no longer shows up.

Search 5:

Next, I tried re-searching social media sites that I use. I tried "Mackenzie Miller" with both "Facebook" and "Instagram" and again neither search located my account amongst the presumably much more popular Mackenzie Miller's out there. As I have continued to keep these accounts private, I did not expect much change.

New Search 6:

In this search, I decided to include resources that I started using during our Web 2.0 investigations in hopes to find an increase web presence from my activities during this course. Unfortunately, my name plus "Twitter" did not yield any relevant links. Similarly, my name plus "Diigo" did not yield any results. I find this unfortunate because, while I worked hard during this course to curate an online presence, I didn't not seem to make much impact -- at least with regard to Google's search algorithms. 





Conclusions and Reflections:

So, did my public digital footprint increase drastically? No.

However, despite my not being easily, publicly searchable, new content, new connections, and new interactions exist! I have engaged with the Twitter-verse and contributed to the collection and organization of resources of Diigo by participating in social bookmarking and tagging. I have generated new YouTube content and shared it with the world. While my contributions aren't worthy of the front page of a massive search engine, I can easily share content I generated there via links and invites to those whom I think would benefit from the insights. In this way, I can continue to grow my online presence. 

As before, 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. Due to these professionalism concerns as well as the COPPA regulations we reviewed during this course, I am content with my relatively limited public footprint.

This isn't to say I don't think I should be engaging in Web 2.0 resources. However, most of the Web 2.0-type sharing my students and I do is behind the access-protected walls of education-specific and COPPA-compliant 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. All of these are COPPA-compliant ways to utilize Web 2.0 resources with my middle school students. During this course, I have added to this list by bringing in other collaborative online software, like CoSpacesEDU, Padlet and Wakelet that protect my students identities and information while allowing them to collaborate with classmates in a secure way. I look forward to finding more resources like these that can enhance my students' learning environment without compromising their privacy or increasing their digital footprint.




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