Cybersleuthing!!

Welcome to my blog post on cybersleuthing!! With this being an online class it’s been hard to make connections with my other classmates. However this did not stop me, it just pushed me out of my comfort zone! I reached out to another student who I was recently put in a breakout room with. I also replied to another classmate’s twitter post who was also looking for a partner to “stalk”. In the end, there were 4 of us who created a plan to cyberstalk one another.

After doing some investigating on my partner I quickly learned their name is very common so I needed to narrow it down. Luckily my partner was able to give me a few more details about themselves in order for me to try and dig up some information. Unfortunately (for this blog post) this person did an awesome job on staying anonymous and hiding their identity. With this being said I sometimes think it’s ok to stay hidden when being a teacher. However, I also feel that teachers are human too so why do they feel like they are always under a microscope? I definitely go back and forth on my reasoning. To add to this, I of course think it is important to stay professional on any social media site just like it would be for any job. The way you represent yourself online can stay with you forever. For example the tweet that Jutine Sacco sent right before boarding the plane. She didn’t think anything of it, she turned off her phone and when she landed her life had changed forever without even knowing. In the Ted Talk by Jon Ronson, “How one tweet can ruin your life” we learned how Justine’s tweet wasn’t intended to be racist. Her tweet was meant to be a joke about “Living in America puts us in a bit of a bubble when it comes to what is going on in the Third World, I was making fun of the bubble.” Justin made the choice to make a joke and then people on twitter from around the world destroyed her. We even saw how one person tried to defend her and then that person was attacked, Justine’s voice was not allowed to be heard. I think we as teachers need to stress the importance of what you put on social media can stick with you forever.

After reading the article “Having multiple online identities is more normal than you think” makes you wonder what is real and what is fake. This doesn’t only apply to having multiple social media accounts but also to when someone posts a picture that is not 100% accurate. For example when someone posts a photo of themselves out for supper, when in reality they are at home maybe battling with depression. These kinds of platforms allow people to create any type of digital identity that they want. This is where talking about what people put online can sometimes not be an accurate representation. Children have to understand that what they sometimes can be seeing, can sometimes be altered.