Posted!

So, this blogging thing is pretty simple, right? Share a bunch of opinions, crack a few jokes, slap on a photo and you’re done. And, no worries if you don’t like what you initially post. You can always just remove the post and try again. Not so! Or at least that’s what I’m learning as I go through our school’s laptop one to one “Bootcamp.” One message has been loud and clear: Think BEFORE you post.

Image from:
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/

One big reason to think before you post is that once something is posted, it becomes very difficult to remove completely from the Internet. Someone might have read your comment and linked it to other sites or blogs, so even if you “remove” a post from your end, it could still exist out there in webworld.

What’s the big deal, you say? Well, let’s imagine that you posted something you thought was “silly” that you did, and you included a photo of the action just for good measure. Then, sometime later, you realize that the thing you wrote (and the photo) makes you look foolish or even hurts someone else’s feelings. You start feeling that deep-down sinking feeling in your stomach, and you know that you want to take the post off your blog. So, you do. But then you learn that someone else had taken your blog post and shared it with others. Suddenly your “silly” little mistake is seemingly all over the Internet, and you can’t get it to go away. You start getting sarcastic comments from friends and classmates at school, and a teacher even talks to you about how disappointed she is that you would have written something such as this, and she questions your character. Suddenly you’ve got a credibility crises.

You’ve been posted!

Fortunately for us this little scenario can easily be avoided because our school has created a “filter” to use as we are drafting anything that we might post online. It’s a checklist that makes us as writers consider our purpose, the online features of our posts, the skill we’ve shown in the writing, and whether or not it meets the personal and school values we hold as well as protecting my own identity and copyright laws.

Source: SAS MS Checklist for a Meaningful Blog Posts

So, if there is one thing that came out of my “boot camp” experience this week, it’s a raised awareness that I really need to be careful as I get involved in sharing information on the Internet. I need to think before I post.

If I don’t, I run the risk of getting posted.