Digital Footprint

I use the term digital footprint with my students all the time.  I teach sixth grade and by this age it's crucial that they begin to understand the long-term effects of what they post on social media.  I have always been careful about what I post online to make sure that my own digital footprint is positive.  For a long time, I didn't want to have a digital footprint at all; I felt like the fewer search results came back identifying me, the better.  However, my thinking about that has changed. Living in today's world, it's nearly impossible not to have some sort of digital footprint and rather than try to avoid it, it's important that we take charge of what the internet will say about us, cultivate our own digital footprint, and create the most positive one possible.
When I searched for myself on the internet, I found just a few results and there was nothing surprising.  My Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Boise State Wordpress Site, and a few other things came up.  The majority of these I use only professionally, so I have no concerns about the content.  My Facebook account has extremely high security settings (mainly because to keep information and images of my children as private as possible), and that's really the only personal social media I use.  I also discovered that there are a lot of Amanda Hensleys in the world and unfortunately, not all of them are making the smartest life choices.  The third search result was entitled "Pregnant and Addicted" - an article about an Amanda Hensley, but certainly not me!   This makes me hope that people who might be looking me up take the time to actually read the results to determine if this is actually the person they're looking for before making assumptions!  I guess that part can't be controlled, but we can try to generate a great deal of positive internet presence to help make it clear in these sort of situations which person is which.  If someone searched me and found a ton of professional, education-related results and one article like I mentioned above, that would definitely help them know that these are not the same person.
As a result of this assignment, I plan to create additional profiles on sites like LinkedIn and make sure that I am putting out as much positive, professional information about myself as possible.