Be Conscious, Think Before you Post

This article is about Carly Mckinney, a first year tenth grade math teacher, who Tweeted inappropriate pictures of herself, regularly Tweeted about her liking to smoke pot, and used rave and drug-related hashtags. Mckinney was a teacher at Overland High School in Aurora, Colorado. This incident affected Mckinney greatly, it resulted in her getting fired from her job as a teacher. In addition, it may be more difficult for Mckinney to get a job in the future due to her online choices. Mckinney’s online choices affected others because the students that she had didn’t have her as a teacher anymore, and Overland High School had to find another teacher to take Mckinney’s place. Also, it affected the school district because they had to make a statement on the situation and it might have made some people think that the school district isn’t doing a good enough job at tracking their employee’s online lives.

Immediacy affected Carly Mckinney’s situation a large amount because once she posted the photos and posts, she couldn’t ever gain control of them again, and this may be one of the reasons why Mckinney was fired. Everybody could have been sharing the photos and posts around almost immediately, and eventually the school district was able to see the photos, which probably didn’t take very long. Permanence has affected Mckinney’s situation because even if you delete a post, somebody will most likely be able to find it, since the photos and posts may have been shared so many times, it would be hard to keep the photos and posts hidden. Lastly, lack of control affected Mckinney because once she posted those tweets online, she couldn’t ever get them back or have them completely erased. If I could give Mckinney advice, I would say that she probably shouldn’t do the things that she’s doing, or at the very least not post about them. In addition, I would say that she should delete the posts or start a new Twitter account, and start fresh from what she can control. In conclusion, everybody should be cautious about what they post online because their lives could be greatly affected by it.

Link(s):

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/carly-mckinney-racy-twitter-pix-get-colo-teacher-nixed/