W6: Final Vanity Search

W6: Final Vanity Search

 

This week I would like to reflect on my journey from my initial vanity search that I learned throughout this course. I started my final vanity search differently this time, so I started with a different internet web browser Microsoft Bing in Microsoft Edge Search Engine. For my initial search, I used Google in Google Chrome. From the image above, you can see in the search field that I started by simply typing my name as it is spelled and without quotation marks, Ami Stovall. When the search results pulled up, I noticed immediately that it generated information that was spot on my name and my personal and professional information, including my portfolio link, LinkedIn site, Facebook account, the WhitePages, zoominfo.com, another graduate school portfolio that I completed, my blogspot.com account, classmates.com, spokeo.com, and others too. Even from classmates.com, I hesitantly clicked on that link. The screenshot below includes my graduating class, a picture of my cat, and a brief history of me that was correct, years of high school, and I did NOT input at the time of my high school experiences... This was amazing to me, and it was more accurate than my first vanity search six weeks ago. 

Next, I did another search with the same internet browser and the same search engine, but I put my legal name in quotation marks. When the search results were pulled up for me to explore, I noticed that there were some of the above-mentioned sites on me as well as some new ones like my YouTube channel, myheritage.com, and journal entries from my semester blogs in graduate school, but not all of them, and even sites that I had reviewed services and goods through the years with my name. This truly amazed me, and I have mixed emotions about this as an older learner who has always been instructed not to share my personal information. On the other hand, I know that technology is not going away, and I love, enjoy, and benefit personally and professionally from technology. I know that I will continue to use it daily in my life. 

Reflection

I know that with so many other things and skills in life, "there is usually more than one way to skin a cat," as I am learning with and from different technology software applications, operating systems, and apps we use for technology. Doing a vanity search alone from different search engines and internet web browsers can and does provide different results, usually due to having software developing companies and employees too that do the coding in different ways, which ultimately provide different types of software, mobile apps, operating systems, and even the knowledge and skills of the front-end users of these tools in technology. What a challenging, eventful, and meaningful experience I have had learning these newer technologies for modern interactive and often mobile learning today!