We’ve been stalking people in english class.
Wanting to teach the kids in my class about concepts of digital footprint and online safety, I used three people well known from the edusphere as examples: Will Richardson, Jabiz Raisdana and Jeff Utecht. I introduced these three friends to the students in my class by giving them only a photo and a name. I simply told the kids in my class: find out all you can about these three guys.
The students made a list of places to search. They started with simply Google and then soon expanded to other places such as flickr, youtube, twitter, wordpress, linkedin, delicious and facebook. They expanded into a Yahoo domain search and searching other sites such as whois.net. Soon their lists of information began to grow. These are some of the things my students learned:
Will Richardson
Jeff Utecht
Jabiz Raisdana
In two periods (about 90 total minutes of research time) my students managed to find quite a lot of details about these three gentlemen.
When we turned from discussing digital footprint to instead looking at online safety, my students were at first shocked and quite horrified at all the information that Jeff, Jabiz and Will had chosen to share online. Then they looked a little deeper. We discussed safety and what safety meant. In the end, my students were amazed at the amount of information shared but felt that overall these guys were being safe. They were concerned about them being able to find a phone number for Jeff online and they were also concerned about Will’s kids and the amount disclosed about them; but they also had to admit that they were not able to find any contact information, school name, etc.
This turned into a great experience for all of us involved. I gained some deeper insight into how my students search online and what kinds of information they can find. We brought many skills together that we had been working on for the last month. We got to talk about safety and digital footprint; two vital concepts for for kids of this age to understand.
Now we can concentrate more on making connections with people around the globe.
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Hey Clarence,
Great project. Weird that this is the second group of kids to “research” me in the last few weeks, and they found basically the same things; which is exactly the things I have shared and want people to find.
I think it is important to keep kids safe and aware of what sharing online looks like, but it is also important not to scare them to the point where they feel confined by the freedom they really have at their fingertips. I think it is great for them to see example of what responsible, public sharing can look like, and I am honored that you chose me in the company of Will and Jeff. Feeling the pressure to write my book
Let your kids know that I found your post first through a google alert set to my name and then through my RSS feed. I have set this alert to I can keep track of what is being written about me online
I did a Skype interview with the other class that did research on me and would be happy to do it with your class too if you think it would be useful.
Find it interesting that with all the ways they could have gotten in touch, none of them chose to contact me as a way to get more info. Shows that they are still careful or is it afraid to make contact with strangers. Is this good or bad? At what age should we expect students to actually make this contact? A simple blog comment could have given them many answers, why didn’t they engage and ask? I know middle school sis still too soon, but then when?
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Great project! Interesting that most of my personal information is from when I was in Saudi. Does that tell me about how little I’ve been blogging in Thailand?
Crazy they found my phone number although it’s off by a digit.
Will have to try and find where they found that at.
What I think is really interesting is how we all only have between 3-6 things under professional, but we’ve got a load of stuff under personal.
Another project that I’ll be stealing….might even return the favor.
Great activity Clarence,
The phone number thing always makes me chuckle since most of us have this very special book in our house that contains the phone numbers and addresses of all the people in your area. It’s called a phone book.
“He has a kind of famous blog”
Love it!
Clarence,
I love this exercise Clarence. Isn’t it interesting that so little is mentioned of what the person ‘thinks’, was documented by your students; even though the sharing of ideas is central to the online lives of these folks.
As a related project, it might be interesting for teachers to do an activity like this. And even though it might raise warning bells, both audiences should consider the information shared openly by young people.
My biggest fear, is that such an exercise would frighten colleagues from sharing even impersonal information…
I too found it interesting that most of the information whether personal or professional was simple things found on the front pages of blogs. They didn’t feel the need to actually read blog posts and form an opinion on who we are. Still curious what that would look like.
What an excellent activity! Like Rodd says, it would be neat to have students discuss how they think each person/subject would answer a few questions, or create a slogan for each. Then, the subjects could share with the class how accurate they were. Thanks for sharing this great activity.
Would love to see what my slogans would be!
Great activity, Clarence – fun and educational! Thanks for sharing!
Great project and yet @dshareski also puts it into great perspective. Shared this with some of our staff to see if something sticks.
Very well done exercise. I only wish my kids’ teachers would do this. Excellent stuff.
Sorry I have been slow to weigh in on this conversation. I wrote the post, pressed publish and then left town; so I’ve been on the road out of contact for two days. A lot of great thoughts here as usual extending the conversation. I was amazed at what these kids were able to find, but as mentioned in the post, was also impressed at how much was shared while still being safe. Certainly these kids missed a lot of information, dig only superficially, and have messed up timelines; let us remember that these are 12 and 13 year old kids. To respond to Jabiz’s comment and people thinking about slogans – we need to remember that the purpose of this task was not to learn what these gentlemen are like – but to uncover personal information about them. I did not ask the students to find out about them. This might explain why there was little thought put in by the kids about this.
Here is a thought- what kind of personal information were they meant to find if not what we are like? Isn’t that personal information? Just asking because I want to get to the heart of what kind of information people are so terrified of exposing. Is it our telephone numbers and addresses, or our ideas and opinions?
Just thinking out loud, about where an idea like this can go. Great start but can this be a deeper look at what is it about private and public and the hang ups people have. Lot’s of great questions. Thanks Clarence.
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Great way to introduce the concept of on-line reputation and safety. Thanks for the great idea, I had planned to cover this in class next week and this is a much better way to introduce it.
This is great project. For the past two years, I have had my students develop their own “digital dossiers” with an eye to managing themselves on the internet as they go off the college. They tend to get lost on google and facebook and always need a nudge to move beyond it–this may be it. Maybe I’ll have them investigate me first, and then develop dossiers on each other. Thanks!
Just for the record, I am not balding on top. Really. I mean it. Serious.
Great stuff Clarence!
I’ve been thinking more and more about how we attempt to ‘protect’ students online and wonder instead if we shouldn’t help them build their online identity. Years ago, this used to be my profile picture, (I still use it nostalgically on Flickr), but now I put my ‘real’ image everywhere. I also share photos of my family, and specifically my kids, on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. We don’t want kids sharing personal information unnecessarily, but if we try to hide their identities, what are we teaching them? I know you realize this as your Idea Hive has both ‘The Hive on Flickr’ and ‘The Hive on Youtube’ and in your small community someone with a name like Davieboy15 would not take long to identify. We can hide under the illusion of anonymity in the digital age or we can start building student profiles that enrich their digital footprints and set those footprints on the right path.
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