Thoughts on Posting to the Internet

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
Omar Khayyam

The subject of MySpace and other sites like it and the controversy surrounding the content that some people post on them came up in conversation again. I thought of this rubaiyat and decided it was a good reminder that we and our students need to be mindful of the material we post to the Internet. It seems unfortunate that employers are hiring or not based on potential employees' past indiscretions. I could understand if the "inappropriate" posts were current but to delve into what someone did years ago as a high school or college student seems a bit harsh. I'm sure all of us did or said things in our youth that we regret or that were less than admirable. I, for one, would not like to have some things I did brought to everyone's attention. This makes it especially important for us as teachers to caution our students and to impress upon them to be responsible users of blogs, wikis, and other web technologies.