Over the last three years I have had a strange relationship with this site, especially this blog. As a teacher training student, newly qualified teacher and then teacher I had a bit of apprehension about this blog. I did all the usual stuff with my online (social networks) life (i.e. lock my facebook privacy down, protect my tweets, create a new twitter account for things I wanted to make public etc) but this site was something else. I went through the blog looking for rude words and changed them, and think I made sure there were no unbelievably inappropriate pictures in the gallery.
I never thought I would be the kind of teacher that would attract unwanted attention and virtual cyber-stalking but I needed to make sure that I didn’t leave myself vulnerable to something embarrassing (many teachers worst nightmares especially as I wouldn’t class myself as a man of infinite ‘coolness’ i.e. there are many (geeky? nerdy?) things in my life that my students would find hilarious) or something so unprofessional that I could find myself in hot water with the ‘man’ (I don’t for second think there is anything like that on the site). However, not one of my little darlings has found this site and I find my initial paranoia being replaced by a realisation that it is perfectly feasable to have an active website while being a teacher. Yey!
Another variable to lob into the mix is that I am leaving Scotland in July. In the next year I find it highly unlikely that I will be teaching full time in the US. I also think I will have more to write about as I settle into my new life and make lots of discoveries trying new things (it’ll be like 2003 all over again!). From the outside (and I could be way off base here) it seems the US education system is far more accepting of the digital age and teachers having websites etc. I’ve seen more US teachers sites that are used to disseminate homework etc than I’ve seen here. Funny story, I remember someone giving us the advice to delete our online existence as much as we could. I have a few big issues with this. Firstly, anything you put out there on the internet is out there for good. I’m pretty sure anthing I have place on this site and deleted is probably saved at the way back machine. Secondly, I don’t think it’s right to expect me to sacrifice something I get enjoyment from (by my reckoning I’ve had a website for over ten years!) just for my job, I don’t get paid THAT much.
So I guess the upshot of all that waffle is that I now feel more comfortable keeping this blog and the rest of the site more up to date – whether I do that or not is another story and where this site fits in with facebook, twitter and google+ seems like enough for a post on it’s own!
Take care