Digital Citizenship

Regarding my own digital footprint, as an educator, it’s important that I’m careful with the digital footprint I leave behind.  I was in my undergrad as Facebook was first becoming big.  Back then, it was a social networking site for only college students.  Being young and in college, there were a few posts and pictures that I wish I could have taken back (and later deleted).  None of the things were too bad, but as I saw Facebook becoming bigger and bigger, and as someone who was going to be a teacher, I decided to be more careful of the things I put on social network sites.  It made me realize that the things I put on the internet are there for the world to see, and I wanted to make good choices of how I presented myself.  It’s not only important for me to leave a digital footprint that I want to leave, but it’s important for everyone.  Young people today don’t realize the repercussions that can happen from what they do on the internet.  Kids need to be taught at a young age that the things they post and publish on the internet can follow them forever, and they need to think about what they’re putting out there.

As far as digital citizenship, the focus needs to be on respect.  Cyber-bullying is something that more kids do than face to face bullying because it’s easier to bully behind a computer.  Digital citizenship starts with teaching kids respect and then expanding it to being respectful online.  With all of the technology available to kids now, I don’t think it’s ever too early to start teaching about digital footprints and digital citizenship.  The sooner kids learn about digital citizenship, the sooner they can apply what they’ve learned.  Before kids learn how to use and use different tools on the internet, they need to learn how to be responsible through learning digital citizenship.  It’s also important to talk with kids about times where they haven’t been digital citizens or when they’ve witnessed someone who wasn’t being a digital citizen.  They need to see what possible repercussions could be, as well as learn ways that certain things could have been avoided or handled a different way.  One thing that I value teaching my students right up there with academics is learning how to be a good person.  We’re living in a digital age, and kids are only going to get exposed to more and more online as we move forward.  Now is the time to teach all kids about digital citizenship, so they can be good people online and off.