Be careful about your web presence

A couple of day ago I posted an entry over at The Program entitled "Be careful what you blog." The post was actually inspired by an entry that I read by Rovy Branon at Situativity: Learning in Context. Rovy posted an entry about a month and a half ago under the title the "Great Blogging Story."

In that entry he briefly gives a caution for students to be careful about what they blog, using a story that he found (i.e., "Hoist by my own petard!"). As I describe on The Program, the essence of this story is about a law student, who was blogging about his studies all semester long and on the final day of classes, the professor calls on him (for the first time all semester) in a way that let's the student know that the professor has been reading his blog all along. The story is interested and underscored by many of those who chose to comment on it.

It was kind of interesting to read all of the comments that people made about his story. I particularly liked the one individual who commented that as a law student himself, after hearing about how many of the big thinkers in his field commonly disagree with each other decided to write a fictional debate between two of the big names. Apparently he had selected the two authors of his textbook without realizing it, and his professor appeared to take great enjoyment in both outing this students and in pointing out that these two individuals got along quite well and often wrote together.

These stories were interesting because of the things that I posted in my last entry (i.e., Creating your web presence). In that entry I asked the questions: "So you have to ask yourself, what shows up when you Google yourself? More importantly, how many other people have done that and how does that impact what those people think about you?"

Based upon these new stories, let me modify that question a bit... What do you want to show up when people Google you? More importantly, how does what shows up impact what people think about you?

Tags: blog, blogging, blogs, graduate student, graduate students, graduate school, higher education, education