From Scrapbook to Facebook

     While perusing the aisles of my favorite craft store shopping for yarn or baking supplies, I often stumble upon the scrap booking aisle and find myself lost.  Aside from creating a photo board and portfolio for the preschool I work at, the closest I've come to scrap booking was maintaining a photo album when I used a camera with a roll of film.  Though I never scrap booked as a hobby, I can't stop looking at all the materials available for this hobby, and the possibilities and hybrids made to document one's life (now there are fashionable notebooks for ideas and inspirations on the go).  I would like to consider myself creative enough to create such pieces of art to document important parts of my life, or to even represent something that I find inspiring.  But alas, I was only capable of turning out sketches or projects over a period of time; nothing immediate.
     Then, along came the age of Facebook: the digital answer to scrapbooks.  Fancy paper is replaced by backgrounds.  Cute accent stickers is replaced by "stamps" in photo editing programs.  We now don't have to wait for film to be processed or even printed out.  It's a simple upload onto the computer and then onto your profile.  As the second half of your photos are loading, you can edit and caption the first half of your photos while you wait.  With the immediacy of technology, and the ability to still make your captured moments fanciful with different programs and applications, people can make equally cherish-able mementos of their lives; right?...
     ...right?  We haven't stumbled upon any photos that should be given a second thought, or status updates that inadvertently conveys a different message than intended; no, of course not.  Where one would want to document the whole process of being part of a wedding party, would one really want to share with the whole world pictures from the bachelorette party?  Everyone has a best friend with whom they share fun times with, but does everybody have to see every picture to every party that you've been to together?  Maybe there is something about the craft of scrap booking, the time taken to choose the right textures and prints to pair with your photos and collected artifacts that makes a scrap book what it is meant to be.  With the ease and instant gratification of being able to upload and share, are we being less selective of what we are sharing?
     As captured on her TED Talks video, Helen Barrett (2010) discusses the use of technology as a way to maintain a digital representation of a child's story, life and progress throughout school.  It's the application here where we must combine what makes scrapbooking and Facebooking great:  we can utilize the technology of online storage, organization and immediacy while still being careful in choosing pieces that best represents our work.  Much like creating profiles on Facebook or Twitter, children can have a personalized profile of their pertinent information and is given endless options and opportunities to share what they would want.  However, that does not mean one should share everything.  Like a scrapbook hobbyist, one should be responsible when given the option of what samples and completed works should be included in the portfolio.  Why not harness technology for what it is capable of doing for us, rather than using it as an unfiltered internet dump of all media, samples or products related to yourself?