aepage.net

With web 2.0 it is becoming increasingly popular to broadcast more and more about your life on the internet. By searching my name on Google, you can find my preferences for music or books, read my daily updates on Twitter and even find who my friends are all through a few easy searches.

I’ve been doing the whole online thing for over ten years now, since I got my first AOL email address and got a taste for the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fan scene. I figured out early on that people actually read what you write on the internet. If you link it to your name, they can find you and it opens yourself up to all sorts of new people.

With the introduction of Facebook and MySpace, regular people began to put more out into the internet. Now, without knowing how to create a website, you can share almost anything with the world at large. When I got on Facebook in Spring 2005, it wasn’t a big deal to put photos up online – so there were pictures of me wearing Halloween costumes, making weird faces and generally being ridiculous.

Then I became a student teacher.

Spring 2006, I suddenly encountered a new problem, students “friending me” on Facebook and finding me online. Until web 2.0, I never really thought about local people finding me online. Most of my contact was with faceless strangers on the internet, finding me through common interests. Suddenly, my students were finding pictures of me in high school, looking at recent purchases I made on Amazon and I had no privacy.

Once I had this embarrassing shock, I deleted everything publicly listed online – adopted aliases and forgot about it. But slowly, over the last three years, I became more lax with my aliases and encountered once, again the same problem but with a new face.

There are now special websites that cater to finding people’s private information online. My personal favorite sites are Pipl.com and Spokeo.com – both sites offer free and premium services for “finding friends.”

After reading an article on Lifehacker, I decided to stalk some friends and family online to see what I could find. My first candidate, was my ever-patient boyfriend Mark. I did basic searches using his full name on Pipl.com and pulled up incredible information: three previous addresses, family members addresses, forum posts from an old MMO he used to play and even listings of email addresses associated with his name. For a price, I could get more currently used information and a social security number.

Once searching for Mark got old, I searched out friends and family members, finding DUI records, speeding tickets, telephone listings, property tax records and even divorce records. Spooky.

Spokeo.com searches social networks, illustrating who has updated their information. Since I’m a teacher and had almost everything be restricted, I thought Spokeo would find nothing about me. Haha. Through some sort of internet voodoo, they found ALL my listings, even private ones on social networks. For a free Spokeo account, all you need to do is register an email address. They also offer special services for corporate recruiters, human resource agents for tracking the online movements of current and prospective employees.

Regardless of what you may think – no one is anonymous online. If you partake in any online services and aren’t careful, you can be found online. I’m not suggesting you become a luddite and forgo the internet but rather, be more savvy about your information online.

After my recent scares and a brush with a weird spammer, these are the steps I took to take control of my own online identity.

1. I drastically limited my presence on social networking sites. I figured out which ones I enjoyed the most and deleted the rest.

2. I registered AEPage.net with Google Apps and have Gmail host all my email addresses. The Gmail service allows for numerous addresses to be associated with the @aepage.net address.

Each website that I register with is associated with a different email address, that does not contain my full name. For example, I am registered with Facebook, and other social networks with an email address similar to: socialnetworkspam@aepage.net When I do anything professionally, I use another email address like: hireme@aepage.net People that I meet randomly at conventions or around Atlanta get what I list on my business cards amyelizabeth@aepage.net which, like the hireme@aepage.net is NEVER registered with any websites. Online bill pay and paypal are registered with other email accounts as well.

These email addresses are then trained with Gmail’s filters to forward only legitimate email to my REAL Gmail address (that is only given to friends and family) and is sorted according to Gmail’s labels. It took me about an hour to set everything up, but it’s worth it.

3. I have a firm “no tag” policy with friends and family who post photos online.
I make it known that I can’t have random photos of me online and check through friends albums after events. Since I started teaching four years ago and implemented this, I’ve only had to email two friends asking them to untag or delete photos from Flickr or Facebook.

4. Rock Facebook filters.

On my Facebook, I have divided all my friends into certain groups, usually through how I know them. Some groups include : Sorority, Mercer, Apple, Atlanta, FoF (friends of friends) and School. Each of these groups are then granted a certain amount of access to my Facebook, which now allows you to decide what information people find on Facebook.

5. Use common sense.
I don’t do anything in real life or post anything online that I would be embarrassed for my boss to find online.

I’m certain that some of you have read the 1,000ish words of this post and probably find me to be rather paranoid. I’d like to assure you, that my paranoia is not unwarranted. Log on to Google and you’ll find numerous articles about people losing jobs and in personal difficulties because of what they have posted online.

For further reading:

Current Mood: Accomplished

So, I’m sure that you’re sensing a theme here, that my last couple of posts are all centered around my summer break that starts next Tuesday. Yay! So, I have to be completely and totally prepared for my awesome summer of blogging, reading and exercising. For my own amusement, I’ve prepped a list of books that are to be released this summer and that I will happy read by the pool.

Note: My graphic novel and books to read list have not been assembled, these are just books I am going to buy ASAP.

Succubus Heat: Georgiana Kincaid Book 4 by Richelle Mead Released 26 May 2009

City of Souls : Signs of the Zodiac Book 4 by Vicki Pettersson Released 30 June 2009

The Pretender’s Crown : Inheritor’s Cycle Book 2 by C.E. Murphy Released 28 April 2009 (Sadly to busy with school to even know it got released already!)

Blood Promise: Vampire Academy Book 4 by Richelle Mead Released 25 August 2009
NB: Richelle Mead is hosting a signing in Alpharetta before attending this year’s Dragon*Con, which is really cool. I’m more excited about the authors rather than actors, I think Twitter helps a lot..

Naamah’s Kiss by Jacqueline Carey Release Date: TBA (I really thought the site said September, but I’m not going to hate. I just want my book.)

Vanished: Greywalker Book 4 by Kat Richardson Release Date: 4 August 2009

I’ve been stuck in the urban fantasy genre (or “vaginal fantasy” as Felicia Day says) for about a year now and I really kind of need to get into a new genre for awhile. At least I’ve sorted the bad authors out now and can focus on the few I really like..

As always, book suggestions are welcome, or send me a message on Twitter.

Current Mood: Dorky

1. Clean Out Closet
2. Buy Dragon*Con Ticket
3. Assemble To Read List
4. Clean Out Bathroom Drawers
5. Buy New Shower Curtain and Tieback
6. Hang Curtains
7. Pay Off Three Credit Cards
8. Take my Car to the Car Wash
9. Organize my paperwork
10. Start photoblogging
11. Do Ceji’s Running Challenge
12. Buy a suit
13. Eat out only once a week

The article that I am referencing comes from The Power and Peril of Praising Your Kids from New York Magazine.

At least once a month, a friend asks for my non-professional opinion about their child’s education. It goes with the territory, as someone who works in a school. I don’t really mind, it’s nice that people ask me for advice that doesn’t involve their Apple product.

This morning, my friend Daniel sent me the aforementioned article and a part of me was like “not another teachers suck at teaching article.” Someone sends me one of those articles about how awful teachers are once a week, with some snide comment like, “Hope that’s not you Amy Page!” I’d love to pelt them with articles about corporate America’s screw ups sometime.

I was surprised to read that it was in fact an article about how praising a child can be more harmful than helpful. Students that are told “you’re so smart” often translate it as “I don’t need to put in effort.” I’ve seen that a few times, the student that sleeps through class, does no work and still expects to have a perfect grade. In the younger kids that were studied, the ones that were told “you’re smart” are harder on themselves and think that because something was hard, it negated their “smartness.”

Most of the research discussed in the article agreed with a few principle ideas:

1. Children need to be praised for resilience
more than “smartness.”
“When we praise children for their intelligence,” Dweck wrote in her study summary, “we tell them that this is the name of the game: Look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.”

Students who need to work hard are stigmatized that they “can’t cut it with their natural gifts.”

2. Working on “higher self-esteem” doesn’t dramatically help academically but that self esteem endures because parents/teachers praising children is often like praising themselves.

3. When praising a student, it must be sincere. Students often translate teacher and parent praise as a sign of someone lacking ability, learning to ignore praise as it’s “meaningless”

4. Students need to learn how to cope with failure, and must be able to talk about their failure so they can learn from it.

From my own personal experience, I can honestly say that I totally agree with findings outlined by the author. I grew up a Special Ed kid, struggling with everything in school. I had a caseload teacher, paperwork and yearly meetings to talk about my progress. By the time I was in middle school, I only struggled with math concepts and pretty much accepted that I was “retarded.” I did excel at reading, writing and Social Studies, but those successes got lost in the myriad of math related failures. Because of my Special Education status, it was believed that I could not “cope with the rigors of AP classes” even though I did well in non-math classes.

By the time I got to college, I had pretty much settled on the idea that I was actually not that smart, but worked really hard. Compliments about my intelligence, while nice, were nothing but well-meant nuggets of encouragement to a struggling student. My parents continually taught me that I needed to work hard and never give up because something is hard. I took the SAT three times and also had a hysterical crying fit my junior year, but never once seriously considered giving up on school because it was difficult.

Today, I teach school and am working on a graduate degree. I don’t know if my story is powerful anecdotal evidence or not, but I do think that the article is worth reading.

Let me know what you think in the comments.