Leslie's WR#8

I haven't used anything public with my students yet, so the problems mentioned in the prompt have not come up for me. And at the risk of a lot of eye rolling and deep sighing among you, dear readers, I have to say that not having to worry about such problems is one more thing that I like about Calibrated Peer Review.

I just took a few minutes to Google myself, and after looking through the first thirty entries without any mention of me, I decided that anybody who wanted to look at more entries to find anything about me is welcome. However, I did do a People Search, and I didn't even put in the city of Eureka, just the state of California, and my name and both of my sons' names appeared immediately. It was something of a shock, but it's also inaccurate. My oldest son has been living in Miami for five years now. One more example of the Internet having good and bogus information.

If I ever do begin using more public spaces for my classes, I would be quite concerned about privacy issues because I'm a private person. I draw my shades at dusk, have given my personal email address to fewer than a dozen people, and tend to think that my business isn't anyone else's. I'll have to lighten up a bit I suppose, but I think it's going to be a challenge for me.
LL


It's a delicate balance for me, LL, this public vs. private thing. I, too, consider myself a private person, but I'll also (blushingly) admit to a little thrill when someone writes for permission to reference my website. Perhaps my ego is stronger (or weaker) than my hermitude.

I don't get FaceBook and MySpace and personal blogs, though. I really don't. That level of personal publicity is like opening my door to the world and inviting it in to poke around the master bedroom closet. That's creepy.

Email makes me nervous, too. On more than one occasion, someone has (thoughtlessly or intentionally) shared a private email with others. Heck, I've even forwarded an email before I remembered the need to erase a portion of that missive. (Fortunately, it was a very long email, with a lot of intervening boring stuff, and the more private stuff was tucked at the bottom--but still. That was bad.)

Perhaps you're better off in your electronic cloister. . . . Tracy

I believe I may (intentionally or otherwise) be one of the select sub-dozen. How privileged I feel! ;-)

I must agree with Tracy on the whole MySpace/Facebook thing. Unless you are selling something or are an artist promoting yourself, it seems unnecessary added stress in addition to being a wee bit creepy. Reminds me of a story... Last year I had a student in my class who, in his online profile for the Moodle course my seniors enroll in, simply said something to the effect of, "If you are reading this, you probably spend way too much time on MySpace. If you want to know something about me, come ask. I don't bite." How's that for a bit of high school wisdom.
~Mauro