Digital Tattoos and Data Mining

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Digital Tatoos

This week in EDU 776, I learned all about digital tattoos. Digital tattoos are essentially the lasting impressions we have made in digital spaces. We live in an age where it's uncommon to not have an online presence in some way. Like body tattoos, digital tattoos (social media posts for example) last forever. Whether we want them to or not! Everyone, adults and children, need to think carefully about the personal information they are putting out in public digital spaces.

For myself, I have personal and professional digital spaces. I interact with Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram very differently. The social media space where I am visible and professional is Twitter. And now I can add Blogger to this list as well!

Only in the last couple years has my viewpoint of my professional online presence changed. I used to think that I didn't want myself to be "seen" online at all. Now that I've been working for a few years for a school district that really puts values in having an online presence, my feelings have really changed.

And yet, I still continue to have conflicted feelings about posting my classroom and my students. Our parents have to sign consent to have their child's image used by our district. If a child is on our "do not photograph" list I always block out their face if they are in a group picture or I will just not include them at all. I also always ask my students if it's okay if I take a picture of them or their work to share with others. However, I realize that 5 and 6 year olds cannot comprehend what it means to be online and what their consent actually means. My administrators, coworkers, and family members appear to love seeing these peeks into our daily classroom experiences but I wonder what the bigger impact is on these students' lives. I will continue to reflect on this and weigh the pros and cons of this practice.

My Data Mining Experience

I had the opportunity to complete my own data mine. I was a little nervous. I know that I have been careful with my online presence but I was unsure what I would find. Here are my results!

Google

I searched for "lrzewnicki" and most of the results were for a Luke Rzewnicki (no relation). 
I searched for "Laura Rzewnicki" and received 118 results. I was honestly surprised there were that few. I found my Twitter, Seesaw activities I've created, my school's PTO minutes (I was on the board for 2 years), some addresses and my sister's name popped up as well.

Illinois Public Salaries Database

I searched for my name in this database and found some outdated info about my salary and employer from 2017. Nothing about my credentials or years of service.

Intelius

This website gave me some pretty basic and accurate information about towns where I've lived and my close family members. It looked like this. 

Spokeo

On this website I found similar info to the previous one, Intelius. However, I did find that there seems to be another Laura Rzewnicki living in Arlington Heights, with relatives that appear to match some cousins I found on Ancestry DNA over the summer. One additional piece of info Spokeo gave was my correct age.

Radaris

This next website gave me similar results to Spokeo and Intelius. It gave me towns I've lived or worked in, previous employer, close family members, and my age.

Peek You

On this website, things got a little weird. They had a photo of me from high school, they said I was a ballerina, they said that "Willie Wonka And The Chocolate Factory is among her all-time favorite movies" and they provided a dead end MySpace link. Whew!

PeopleFinders

This website gave me the same info as the ones previously. My name, age, family members, and places of residence were all pretty accurate. When I tried to get a full report I was met with this funny disclaimer but then it led me to a page where I would have had to pay to get the all the details.

Reactions and Takeaways

I was prepare to be scared of what I would find is public online for the world to see. I ended up being pleasantly surprised. I think my years of being a bit cautious of the internet have given me good results. There is some of me online of course. There should be! Especially as an educator who is obtaining their technology degree, I want to make sure I have a professional presence, and I do! I have further reflecting to do as an educator and what else I want to be available to people when they search for me.

Additional Resource

Comments

  1. Sophia EspinozaOctober 9, 2019 at 7:50 PM

    Hi Laura,

    You bring up such a good point about little ones not being able to fully consent to having their pictures taken. When I've taught PreK/K and taken pictures of my students, I thought, it's fine because their parents think it's fine. Essentially we've decided that though it's going to be a part of their personal digital tattoo, their parents are the ones who decide what gets imprinted until they are adults. Just like with so many other types of consent it makes sense for parents to have this right, but it is an interesting moral dilemma.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NMZumpanoOctober 11, 2019 at 1:08 PM

    I love the layout of your post- it was very easy to understand what you found, and where you found it. I always think it is fantastic that you ask your littles for consent before taking their picture. Keep this up!

    ReplyDelete

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