PLN 12

The Internet is very quickly slipping into our daily lives. We use it to do school and home work, organize dates, talk to friends, update on news, and now, it has even given employers a way to search for negative and even positive information on potential employees. In Will Richardson's article Making Kids “Googlable” , he talks about how schools can and perhaps should do more to make their students "Googlable" to make them ready for their futures.

This article matters to the world because Google is becoming one of the easiest ways to do background checks on potential employees. Today, even myspaces are being used to do searches. Absolutely awful things are put on personal web pages. People verbally attack others, complain about jobs, and curse like there is nothing more pleasing in this world. When employers see things like this, they are less prone to consider that person for the job. Will Richardson has set out to convince schools to create on-line portfolios for students, so as to prevent mistakes and lost job opportunities.

This post matters to me because I too use the Internet, I too have a blog, and I, like so many others, can be "googled". I know that I have to be careful about what I say on this blog, and any other personal web page I create, simply because my next boss could be reading it. I have to be respectful to myself and others, because my job could depend on it. Luckily, none of this is a problem for me, but I see less than appropriate comments on my friends blogs. They don't realize it, but what they say about a girl in their 3rd hour class may well affect the outcome of their first job interview. While I am still a little "iffy" about creating on-line portfolios for students, I do fully support teachers and administrators in educating their students on how to be positive on their myspaces, blogs, and face books. Who knows who might be reading them.