Current Web Presence

When I Googled my name earlier this week I brought up over 6 million hits, which given the apparent commonness of my name is not surprising. However none of them on the first 7 or so pages were associated with me at all. I know that my name exists out on the web in small ways. I have a facebook page, a personal blog on LiveJournal (I don't think I've ever used my last name here though.), I made a wiki last semester in TE 301, and my name appears on the websites for State of Art winterguard and the Spartan Marching Band color guard, which were both created by my roommate. To find all of these quickly through a Google search someone would have to know other facts about me, such as my membership in color guard, my hometown, or the classes I've taken. I've worked hard over the past few years to protect myself online and prevent anyone other than the people I allow from seeing any content I put on the web. For personal things like facebook or LiveJournal that is perfectly appropriate, however through this class I am beginning to see that there is importance in developing a more public web presence where I can put forth a professional image of myself and my work.

As I have looked through the Past Gallery and done my own exploration through building my web portfolio I believe that this will be a very useful tool for me as I work toward entering the workforce as a teacher in the next few years. This site will be a first step toward developing my professional web presence and can also serve as a place to display and share my thoughts and ideas about education. I can use it for future employers to have easy access to my resume, some information about me as a person, and my beliefs about teaching (my teaching philosophy). I also plan to use this site as a place to collect links to work I do on the web from all of my classes. I already have a wiki that I developed in TE 301 for my Literacy Reference Project and I plan to make a web site that serves as a collection of elementary school science resources for my honors option in SME 301. This portfolio will be a convenient place for employers and colleagues to access the work I have done preparing to enter the education field and the work I do from there. For this reason I created a page in my portfolio specifically for coursework. I want to present myself through this portfolio in a way that is honest, professional, and positive. I want others to see my ideas about the career I am enthusiastically about to undertake and hopefully they will give me feedback that I can use in the future.