Social Bookmarking Sites and the Lives of Teachers

Alright. I'll admit it. I'm more than a little bit biased toward using computers in the classroom. I've been exposed to technology in conjunction with leaning ever since I borrowed my first 4-inch floppy from the computer lab at my homeschooling center. I held that big white packet that I knew held an incredibly dust-free copy of Oregon Trail, and I was hooked.

But the drastic shift in *how* we use technology from then to today still leaves me a little bit concerned. I'll tell you why. Nowadays, we have a multiplicity of profiles, usernames, and logins. In fact, we have a multiplicity of SELF that we've never experienced before. To further explain the idea of how our current tool use effects our identities, I encourage you to watch Amber Case's TED Talk entitled We Are All Cyborgs Now.

So, how do we go about not only carrying these selves--but find ways to organize them in meaningful and understandable ways? A quick check of Wikipedia will tell you that social network aggregation involves:

...collecting content from multiple social network services, such as Instagram, Tumblr, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitch, YouTube, etc. into one unified presentation. The task is often performed by a social network aggregator (such as Hootsuite and FriendFeed), which pulls together information into a single location, or helps a user consolidate multiple social networking profiles into one profile. Various aggregation services provide tools or widgets to allow users to consolidate messages, track friends, combine bookmarks, search across multiple social networking sites, read RSS feeds for multiple social networks, see when their name is mentioned on various sites, access their profiles from a single interface, provide "lifestreams", etc.

In other words, social network aggregation sites have the power to present a more holistic picture of our digital selves. This is great news for teachers who want to connect with their students, peers, and employers in meaningful ways! My question is this: If we use social bookmarking tools (say, Pinterest) with our students and then add those to an aggregating page--what keeps those identities separate? Certainly, Pinterest itself has privacy measures. However, I've noticed the trend for aggregate pages to disregard those privacy settings altogether. Is there a way this can be resolved? Or should teachers now start worrying that their everyday digital life will always be open and accessible to every student? Food for thought.