At university, one of the pervasive themes in talks from teacher trainers, union representatives and other students has been the disasters that can be caused by computers. The horror stories range from the student teacher who somehow "inexplicably" got soft-porn pictures mixed up with the slides in his powerpoint presentation which he then showed to a class of year 10s - he was sacked from the placement, despite allegedly being innocent (personally I'm skeptical that some kind of malicious and intelligent computer virus could have got into his computer, downloaded picures of boobs, and inserted them into his presentation without him noticing...but hey) to the teachers who had a not-private-enough Facebook bitching session about a pupil they didn't like, which was discovered by the pupil who then took them to the cleaners for cyber-bullying.
Facebook/Myspace/social networking didn't exist when I was at school, and when I think about it I'm really bloody glad about that. I didn't always have the best of times at secondary school, and if the teenage-girl-bitching had been taken to the realms of the internet it would have been much worse. It was bad enough putting up with it from 9-3.30...But now I'm an adult, anyway, so the question is: are teenagers REALLY that concerned about looking up their teachers online, or is this all just teacher-training egocentrism, paranoia and navel-gazing??
So a common topic of conversation among us student teachers has been how to ensure our internet privacy from web-savvy students: "Have you tried googling your name??" has been a pervasive question. I personally have the excellent protection of an exceptionally common firstname-surname combination: thanks Mum - I'll never whinge about your unimaginative naming techniques again. There's a horse-rider, a street and a voice-coach in the first page of results and absolutely nothing to do with ME. Still, I've heard too many horror-stories to let my guard down immediately. This very blog could potentially get me into a lot of trouble. As a result, I took my surname off it recently, but I don't know how much good that would do as I have a whole other blog that goes by my full name - intentionally, as that's where I put my published writing work (such as it is, don't get overexcited). But when the broadsheets come looking for me to offer me that column, I want them to know where to find me...
Facebook privacy has dominated so many conversations that it's starting to feel like the whole thing is more trouble than it's worth, so I'm considering just deleting my profile.
Reasons to delete: less hassle messing around with privacy settings/stressing about tags in photos/hiding my face, celeb-wise, whenever a camera appears at a party!
Reasons I like FB: when I was living abroad, it made me feel alot closer and more up-to-date with my friends back home: I knew what was going on, when big things had happened to them, I saw photos of what they were up to. Now I'm here but in a long distance relationship, it enables me to make gestures like the photo-story I made for my boyfriend on our anniversary. I get invited to parties and festivals and events that I might otherwise miss out on. Some friends/acquaintances I don't really talk to regularly but I like knowing what their up to from FB.
OK, I've now effectively argued myself out of the deleting idea, so I guess I'll be sitting in my room fiddling with privacy settings for the rest of the day. If anyone reading this has any insights about internet privacy etc, please comment! (under your real name or a pseudonym, as you prefer...;-)
