Category Archives: PublishUpdates

Image via The Huffington Post

The Vancouver School Board has drafted and presented a policy that would ban teachers from friending their students on social media sites.  The policy states that “teachers would still be encouraged to use social media to engage their students in a strictly-professional capacity, such as creating event pages to discuss upcoming field trips.”  The issue lies within the wording of the policy, many argue that it is too open ended. One problem with the policy is that it states teachers must “monitor all content [they] or others post to your personal social media accounts to ensure that it is consistent with your role in the school district“. This piece of the  policy is slightly contradictory. Teachers are expected to interact with their students while not being “friends” with them on the social  network. The students can’t access their teachers timeline, nevertheless, the teachers are being held responsible for all content they or others may post.  While there is a setting on Facebook that allows only the account creator to post on their own timeline, this drastically limits the accounts ability to connect with friends and family.

It is impossible to have 100% control over your Facebook time, friends could fall for phishing tactics which then could be shared on your timeline. This being said, even the most media savvy teacher  couldn’t “monitor all content” on their account. Would it be a better policy to not allow teachers to interact with  students, parents  and staff in any way on Facebook?

Mashable writer Matt Petronzio would disagree. Mr. Pertonzio suggests that teachers restrict their interactions with students to Facebook pages (groups).  These classroom pages should be set up by a different account created by the teacher. This allows students to connect to the teachers announcements and updates as well as provides a place for classroom discussion.  The problems the Vancouver School Board are focusing on could be solved with professional accounts and Facebook pages.  This way teachers could friend students only with their professional accounts and keep their personal accounts well, personal.

Another suggestion is teachers could use only one account but isolate students and parents by using Facebook group privacy settings. These settings are easy to set up and then each post can only been your friends. Students and  others on the restrictive list will only have access if you chose to share it with them at the time of posting.

Hopefully the Vancouver School Board looks at all options before their strict policies discourage teachers from using Facebook and other social media to connect with their students.

As always, it is important to remember that Social Media is a two way street and just because a teacher is being highly restrictive of their personal account doesn’t mean that students will do the same. 

Do you believe that social media can be an educational tool for teachers or do the risks outweigh the benefits?

Image Credit – Meera Sapra
http://lifesacomicstrip.blogspot.ca/

It’s official – the paper resume and cold call have gone the way of the dinosaur.  Linkedin, which once seemed cutting edge, now represents the basic standard of professional networking.  Marketing yourself in the job market has become much easier with the rise simple content creation tools and Web 2.0. The tricky part is standing out in the endless barrage of content.  How do you standout in a ocean containing 40% of the globes population?

The answer is that you no longer just have to sell yourself to a particular job but instead selling yourself to the entire online world.  This is often called personal branding. Wikipedia defines personal branding as “the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brand” but could also be defined as shameless self promotion. Personal branding is more than having your work turn up when your name is searched, it is also making sure that your name pops up when the area of your expertise is searched. Personal branding can expand beyond the internet with social media gurus recommending dressing in a trademark manner at professional events. Think Steve Jobs distinctive black turtleneck.

It might appear at first glance that personal branding is nothing more than a passing fad that only applies to those interested in marketing. Nothing could be further from the truth. While the marketing industry was among the first to embrace personal branding, it applies to anyone hoping to define themselves in a field.

Students and young professionals struggle with personal branding for two reasons. The first is their extended trail on social media. This trail isn’t necessarily a bad thing however, it waters down your personal brand. If your blog shares a name with your Instagram account and they aren’t connected by content, the message the users wanted to find is more difficult to find and perhaps lost.

Another issue young  people have with personal branding is finding their niche. It’s all well and fine for an established professional to brand themselves as a Health Guru or a  Circus Photographer yet a undergrad student may have not yet declared a major.  How can young people define their personal brand while still figuring out their course of study? We at Digital Tattoo have put together three quick tips on how to build a flexible personal brand.

One -  Create something positive. Whether it’s a blog of poems or a flickr account without selfies, positive online content is a great way to show off what you can create.

Two -  Join a online community. This is a great way to flaunt your tech skills and ability to work within a group. It could be as simple as an online book club or as complex as driving into coding puzzles at GitHub, the important key is it shows off your ability to contribute and collaborate.

Three-  Start something. Either virtually or in the real world, creating a movement shows that you are willing to take risks and go above and beyond in your creative vision.  Think- What are your passions? What do you wish existed in your school or hometown?

Following these three steps will build up your personal brand, then you can figure our your snazzy title.

What are you doing to craft your personal brand?

Image Credit – dannydillen.com

Many students see graduation as the time to buckle down and clean up their social media footprint.  It’s their first step into the real world. Time to put on the business suit of the virtual world in order  to make a good impression. This mindset, although good in theory, isn’t early enough to take control of their digital identity.

According to a 2012 survey of university admissions counselors by Kaplan, 27% of admissions counselors Google prospective candidates and 26% look up students on Facebook.  Most importantly, 35% “said that when checking up on a student’s online presence, they found something that negatively impacted an applicant’s chances of getting in”. These numbers will only grow as social media becomes the new standard for vetting.  In a May 31st article on Buzzfeed, university admissions track student created social media content before they offered admission.  Buzzfeed interviewed an admissions councilor in the northeast US to discuss their universities policies regrading online identities of students.

As students are becoming more concerned about their online privacy they tend to be drifting away from or locking down their Facebook profiles. The more serious errors in judgement often happens on networks which may or may not be linked to their real name such as Tumblr and Twitter.  Students will tag posts or tweets with the name of the university and then make a statement about their desire (or lack of) to attend.  Admissions counselors regularly check these tags and  if they are writing negative remarks about the school, it reflects poorly on a students chance of acceptance.  Even if a real name isn’t tied to the account counselors claim to “[have ways to] know who it is”.

At the end of the interview, the admissions councilor confessed that social media was a double edged sword. Her students could also find her networks and embarrassing things she had done.  It seems you are never too old or too young to care about your online identity.

Image from BBC Weather and Twitter

Phishing is the act of using a fake and malicious link to lure the user into giving away private account information to a hacker. Often the user doesn’t even need to send their password to the hacker,  with a dangerous link in a tweet or email users can give up account passwords in just one click.

Basic phishing schemes are becoming more difficult for hackers as more websites add a two factor log in system. Gmail and Amazon both ofter the more secure system.  As the two factor log in system becomes the industry norm, it is even more surprising that the social networking site Twitter continues to use the single password system.   While industry sources are pointing in the direction of more complex security, twitter has yet to commit to changes in their current password system.

Twitter has been in the headlines recently for the large number of hacks a group calling themselves the Syrian Electronic Army has been committing on news agencies twitter accounts. One recent example was the group hacked the British newspaper The Telegraph. The hacked accounts were controlled through the Twitter website and proxy servers. The hacker then assumed the online identity of the twitter account holder and used the personal branding that they have cultivated against them. When the  Syrian Electronic Army hacks a Twitter account often its agenda makes the hack immediately clear.  Yet this is not always the case. When the AP News Twitter account was hacked and broadcasted false information about an attack at the White House, the Stock Market took a steep dive in what Forbes called “the priciest tweet in the world”. Twitter has become a mainstream media outlet and therefore hacking a well respected Twitter account can cause the same shock waves as legitimate breaking news.

Do the recent hacks cast Twitters credibility into question? Do you use social media as a news source? Why or why not?

Image via Facebook

Social media and reality television is a terrible combination for those who hope to fly under the radar. This is a lesson that the “stars” of the latest episode of “Kitchen Nightmares” have yet to learn. The show featured Arizona restaurant Amy’s Baking Company, the premise was that their failing restaurant would bring in celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay to critique and aide in its recovery.  During the episode the owners yelled at customers and Ramsay alike refusing to  take his advice. After the episode, users of the social networking site Reddit flocked to the restaurants’ Facebook page leaving negative comments. It’s no surprise that the internet can bite back and that ignoring trolls can be easier said than done. The owners of Amy’s Baking Company exacerbated the situation by sharing their frustration by behaving unprofessional in multiple posts on Facebook.  On May 14th, the restaurants’ page went from 600 to 30,000 likes as the story went viral. The explosion of negative press steaming from their negative reactions over social media reached a much larger audience than the original episode of the show. The story has since been featured in Buzzfeed, The Huffington Post, Forbes and many other news organizations.

Forbes has compiled a list of seven “lessons” from Amy’s social media disaster. These include telling the truth, not responding to every comment and learning when to walk away.  Social media gives everyone the opportunity broadcast their thoughts and opinions to the world. The trick is organizing your online presence in a positive and productive manner. Amy’s Baking Company could have used its facebook to defend and rebuild brand identity. Instead they took the low road resulting in a public relations nightmare.

What would have suggested to Amy’s Baking Company to avoid this backlash? Is it ever better to hide out than defend your online persona?

The mobile app Snapchat continues its atmospheric rise in popularity. As of April, 150 million “snaps’ were sent daily.  The majority of these snaps are little more than silly expressions, breakfast shots or fashion critiques. The success of Snapchat is built on the idea of sending trivial photo messages to friends without leaving a trace. Consequently the continued attempts by the tech community to reconstruct erased images are worrisome to more than those who have used Snapchat for sexting.

A forensic computing company in Utah has cracked the code on finding and reopening received snaps. The images remain saved in the phone and are saved with a .nomedia file name. This extension can be ignored using downloadable forensic tools and image can be reopened.

Currently Decipher Forensics can only discover snaps that have been sent to Android phones but they are working on developing a similar solution for IOS. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter are created to share information with as many people as you have on your network. Snapchat markets it’s self on more personal one to one sharing. While your snaps certainly have more privacy than your status updates, this discovery proves once again that nothing on the internet is private and anytime you trust a third party with your information you risk losing control over it.

Shane Dingman wrote about this discovery in the Globe and Mail using language which was nothing less than hyperbolic. For example the scenario of “Snaps detailing a criminal conspiracy, and[then] that device fell into the hands of the police”, might not be the main user demographic of Snapchat. Nevertheless, Snapchat isn’t a fail proof system. So go ahead, keep sending those quirky up the nose shots but think twice before sending anything that could harm your digital identity.

In a recent article, the Digital Tattoo Project reviewed the controversial topic of online privacy and how the concept continues to evolve with the advent of new technology and applications.  However,  social media isn’t the only source of privacy  concerns for digital citizens today. Website tracking refers to the act of archiving existing website history and data, and then tracking changes to these visited websites over time. Different businesses apply this technique in various ways, such as tailoring specific information to potential customers. To learn more about website tracking, cookies, tailored advertisements, and what they mean for your online privacy, check out our latest addition to the “Think Before You Ink (TBYI)” series below!

Have you noticed advertisements being tailored to your previous searches? Where do you draw the line with what activity should be private? Do you feel comfortable having your activity tracked online?

Discuss in the comments below!

Facebook wants you back. The worlds largest social network understands that it’s novelty is fading. Recent statistics show that the percentage of teens who rank Facebook as the number one most important social network has shrunk dramatically in the past year.  The theories behind this are many. Are teens sick of using their parents social network, aka the new classmates.com or is the nature of public sharing becoming passe? A 2012 study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project  revealed that teens are equally concerned about their online privacy on social networks as their parents. These results shouldn’t come as a shock for social networks such as Google  or Facebook who have been losing user engagement  to Snapchat, Vine and other start-ups. The new social networks are creating new ways to connect with your friends, not all 500 of them but a small social group of close friends. Remember them?

Facebook isn’t blind to this shift towards privacy and personal interactions. The company hopes to emphasize the platforms ability to broker private interactions. In the press video for Facebook’s new mobile platform Facebook Home,  the developers talk about Facebook’s ability to create private groups and explain the importance of a constantly running private chat function. At one point a developer even name checks Shapchat, which is a clear message of whose path the company hopes to follow.  The question is, will a  shift toward private channels of communication keep the social network from becoming stagnant?

A recent article on Forbes.com calls the year 2013 the year privacy goes mainstream. Do you agree? Is 2013 the year of Google Glass, #watertown and reddit, also the year of protecting personal privacy?

Students commonly use Google image search to find images to use in their projects and presentations.  They don’t believe they are infringing on copyright law as long as they don’t profit financially from the images use. This is not the case, as all images used need to be cited. As all uses of text must be cited, the same rules applies to copyrighted images.

Recently the Automobile company BMW MINI awarded a photography prize to a user who photoshopped a creative commons image without citing the original creator. The original image was  uploaded to Wikipedia under a creative commons licence which required users to give creator credit when editing, using or sharing the image.  BMW has hence withdrawn the photo from the website and the competition.

When creators graciously share their work under a creative commons license it doesn’t give the user a free image to take and claim for their own. All CC work must be cited when it is shared or used in any fashion.  Watch the embedded clip below which will guide you on how to find and then properly cite open access images.