Essential Question:   When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint?

Protect Your Digital Footprint

Fields Mosely

Fields Moseley has several interesting points in his blog titled Protect You Digital Footprint, one of them being,

“Unlike footprints in the snow or sand, your digital footprint out there in cyberspace, can last forever.”

The thought of this can be a bit disconcerting as I begin thinking that everything I do, write, comment on, and create is out there permanently for anyone’s perusal, not just those that I wrote or posted to, but anyone. Revisiting  Kim Komando’s Cyberspeak blog on Your online reputation can hurt your job search, is a bit scary as well, as it seems that “they” whoever they may be, future employers, government agencies, whoever, can easily gain access to my personal life by searching my social networking sites, photo albums, and even albums others have posted with pictures or information about me in them. Pretty freaky!

I appreciated listening to Silvia Tolisano as she advocated for not being fearful of sharing on line, but to separate your professional from your private life by choosing a special name for your professional blog and moving away from hiding information to making your blog space special and inviting your readers to “Please google me,” instead of being afraid to go public. It seems like her suggestion is to, yes, get out there and go public, take your professional development online and grow and change there, inviting others to join you as you learn. What a very cool suggestion!

Silvia’s presentation on Chatrooms in the Classroom was inspiring. The enthusiasm, questions, comments, reflections, ideas, suggestions, doubts, fears and learning that was flying as our class experienced the group chatroom, many of us for the first time, led me to believe that chatrooms can be a powerful tool in the classroom.  Just as we collaboratively made a footprint of our learning at that moment in time I feel that students, too, should be able to join in the excitement of learning as we did. And, we always have Silvia to turn to for answers to questions and to give us advice on how to implement the chatrooms and subchatrooms into our classrooms to foster student learning.

In regards to the essential question of the week, “When and where should we be teaching students about their digital footprint?” I think the answer is here and now. Both parents and students need to be made aware at the beginning of each school year and reminded of our AUP throughout the year. Contracts should be signed by both parents and students accepting the AUP so that there is accountability and consequences may be administered if needed. As more and more learning is done digitally this issue becomes more and more important and most certainly needs to be addressed here and now.

This last video clip caught my interest. It includes tips for marketing yourself online.