Welcome back to my Teaching Toolbox! This post will be about your Digital Footprint and online Identity. Enjoy!
What exactly is your digital footprint? Dictionary.com defines a digital footprint as, "one's unique set of digital activities, actions, and communications that leave a data trace on the Internet or on a computer or other digital device and can identify the particular user or device". Our digital footprint follows us everywhere we go and it can be extremely hard to dismantle it. That is why I want to teach my students that what they do, say, and interact with online matters. It is easy to say that your actions online are inconsequential, especially if you aren't immediately seeing the results of your activities. But that mindset is a huuuuge misconception about your digital footprint-- it follows you forever!
I will encourage my future students to do things like Google themselves to see what sort of information about them pops up. I would ask if they feel comfortable with what they see. Is it something you would feel comfortable with a future employer seeing? How about your family?
The great thing about our digital footprint is that there are so many ways to use the internet as a platform for good. Read below about a student who used is digital footprint to spark positive change in his own school!
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