No Skeletons Here!

Well, I’ve look at my name on Google several times before, so this exercise was not very surprising. For the last couple of years, I pursued a career in law enforcement so I had to make sure my digital image was squeaky clean. When someone looks up Ben Fraticelli, they will find either me or a public health professor who is an adjunct faculty member at UC Berkeley. I’m surprised that the other Ben Fraticelli resides in an arena next to where I grew up, maybe I should call him. There are links to my Myspace or Facebook page, but also certain things I participated in like a cross country race or theater production. Here are some of the links:

http://www.dmtonline.org/dmtarchives/Shows_Worked3.html
http://www.myspace.com/nebjamin99
http://www.facebook.com/bfraticelli
http://www.sweatrc.com/Results/Turkey_Trot/2002.txt\

I did search my internet handle, nebjamin or nebjamin99, and that produced a few forgotten links. I found my flickr and photobucket pages, but neither of those sites had anything that would worry me about someone else seeing.

I don’t think I’d change anything about my pages. I monitor other people’s posts, and make sure that my pages are G rated. Of course, I don’t have much to worry about though because I’m an R-rated person, nor are any of my friends.

I think teachers should hold themselves to a certain personal and professional standard. If they have a secret life that might not be well accepted, then they should be aware of keeping their guard up. They should not be expressing themselves in an online world if they are not internet savvy enough to protect themselves.

I wouldn’t let students be my friends with my personal page on any social networking site. I might create a professional page that will allow students to interact with me but the professional and personal page would never be linked. I think it would also be prudent if I periodically searched for my name to see if anything changes about my online “resume”. New students and parents will probably always be looking, so I should always be aware of what everyone else sees so I can defend myself if necessary.