Online Footprint Report
Description and Rationale
You may not think you have much online for potential employers to find, but you can't know for sure until you do a thorough investigation. Once you have looked at social media sites and search engines, you can evaluate what you found and decide what content should be changed, what should be deleted, and which steps to take to secure your privacy. For this paper, you will do five tasks and write a report about each one.
Task #1: Look up your own name and nickname in the sites listed below. Even if you never have opened them before, someone you know may have posted something with your name or photo in it. You don't always have control over what other people post. List what you found in each site. If you found nothing on the site, write "no posts" next to its name in your paper.
Task #2: Look over the content about yourself that you found. Close your eyes and picture your mother, your pastor, and your boss looking over your shoulder at your computer screen. In yellow, highlight the sites and the content that needs to be deleted. In green, highlight the content that needs to be revised.
Task #3: Write down the five goals from the readings that you put into the last quiz. Look over the readings again and add five more things you can do to improve your online footprint. You will end up with a list of ten tasks. There will probably be tasks that can only be done in the future, such as deciding to only post positive information about your employer. Choose five of the tasks that can be done immediately and highlight them in blue.
Task #4: Do the five blue-highlighted tasks in all of the sites that had yellow highlighting.
Task #5: Search the websites again. Did you find anything that still needs to be changed?
Assignment
For this assignment, you will write a 1,000-1,200 word report with the following sections:
- Introduction about the importance of a positive digital footprint
- Results of Tasks 1-5
- Your plans for maintaining your positive digital footprint
- What you learned from this project
Documentation Requirements
You don't need any citations unless you used outside content in your report.
Scoring Standard
You will be graded on your ability to adhere to the following requirements:
1. Format
- 750 – 1000 words
- Informal report format
- Serif font (such as Times New Roman, Garamond, Palatino, etc.)
- 12-point font, 1-inch margins
- Headings, if necessary, in body of the text
Your report should have these sections:
- Introduction
- Results
- Future plans
- What you learned
