"Kids are growing up on a digital playground and no one is on recess duty." ~ Kevin Honeycutt on Twitter
This is a timely topic, as I have a course called LEAD, (Library Exploration and Digital Citizenship). I have been wanting to inject more digital citizenship into the course, and we are not yet at that part of the class, so I hope to gather more ideas from Thing 18. In LEAD, we already talked about cyberbullying and internet safety, which all lead back in one way or another to digital citizenship.
In my class, I would like to have students Google themselves, as a quick and easy exercise. I can even use myself as an example. When Sara Kelly Johns wrote an SLJ piece that included the animoto videos I use to show what is happening in the library each quarter, I didn't realize that I'd find my name on a handful of blogs, and being quoted as well. It was a pleasant surprise! I don't make a habit of googling myself; it had been quite a long time, but I'm glad I did it. I can show students how one small mention online can spread, (positive or negative).
I love to take (and post) photos. Photos, photos and more photos. Naturally, I wanted to try The Museum of Me. It was very interesting to see the video, but I could tell it pulled random photos of friends and probably used a similar algorithm to the facebook "Look Back" videos.
I read several of the articles, many of which bring up the fact that college admission officers are Googling students to find out what sort of web presence they have. I think this is one facet of a person's character, and something colleges should be able to use a part of their college application/assessment. I don't know that prospective college students would agree with me.
What we post online becomes public information. I wish more students would realize that it is inevitable and unavoidable that, like it or not, they may be judged based on their digital footprint. I agree that scaring students is counterproductive. We need to help them build a positive digital footprint, as unique as they are, and to understand what a powerful thing the Internet is. I hope to be able to impress this upon them in my class so that they can not only be safe online but also build a positive presence.
Here are two other resources that might be helpful for others:
This website article from NEA will give insight to adults on how teens see their own web presence:
This article stresses the need for education around digital citizenship:
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