Privacy

Protecting Your Identity

It is very common for students to feel nervous about putting themselves "out there" on the web when they are navigating the complexities of this new career path and becoming someone they have never been before -- a teacher. For this reason, we recommend that all students foreground their digital hub as a work in progress, and state clearly (on the About page) that their hub is a space for open professional reflection, for the sharing of works-in-progress, and that it will evolve. Further, although your professors will often ask you to post academic work to your Hub as a way to build foundational digital literacies skills, and to help you become more comfortable as a public professional, you will never be asked to share information that would compromise your personal boundaries or identity, or require you to reveal too much about yourself. Further, your work will NEVER be evaluated publicly. Even on blog posts -- no professors will openly comment on your blogs because even a comment like "Nice post!" can be perceived as evaluative.

Please do not share your address and telephone number on your website. If you choose to include a CV on your website, as many professionals do, we recommend that you leave your personal information OFF of the web-based version. When you apply to jobs, you submit a CV that includes your personal contact info -- but online, the CV is there to highlight your experiences only.

You can include an email contact on your website -- but it's a good idea to include that address as part of the social and contact icons you add to your site, rather than typing it out directly on a page. Spam bots search the web for emails -- so don't make it too easy for them to get your email address. Remember, you also do not want to make yourself a target for identity theft. Do not provide information about your life that people could use to hack into your personal accounts.

In 3150 and in all of your first-year courses, professors will ask you to share the link to your digital hub with your classmates. This is a small group of people, all of whom (should!) understand that open access to the emergent digital hubs of classmates is a shared commitment to respectful idea sharing. We share these links so that we can support one another, not evaluate or critique one another. Under no circumstances should you share the links of your classmates' digital hubs without first receiving permission from that person. Professors, too, will ask before they share a student's digital hub link with anyone outside of the class. 

As a community of learners, it is important for us to treat other students' work respectfully and in the spirit of honest collaboration. 

We anticipate that some students will need to safeguard their identities for a range of reasons. It is important for students to know that they can participate online using a pseudonym or by creating a teacher “brand” that does not reveal their identity. Faculty will need to mentor students on a case-by-case basis; however, most students should be able to acquire the technical and digital literacies skills that the Hub supports by creating professional accounts that do not include their real name or include their real image.

For example: Although this teacher shares a professional bio on his About page, the URL does not reveal his identity, and he could certainly have included an avatar image rather than a real image of himself: http://tech.savvyteachers.com/

Protecting Students' Identities

Remember that students can be identified through you. Unless you have explicit parental permission and the permission of your Associate Teacher, please do NOT post images of students' faces on your Digital Hub. You can insert images of students' hands at work, or examples of students' projects (without visible names or identifying information) to show off the great things your students have done. But please, do not identify them or post anything that could compromise their identity. To that end, we recommend that you do not openly name the school(s) where you do your practica. This information would appear on the full CV that you would submit with your job application -- but online, you can say you taught Grade 3 in the Ottawa Carleton District School Board and the experience is still as legitimate.