Digital Footprints

[Julia Hengstler]

Digital footprints, traces of our activities in digital environments, impact our professional image--especially now that this type of data can be brought together from numerous sources. Sometimes called 'digital tatoos', this data can be content you voluntarily post (active), data collected about you (passive) as per the definitions in the PEW Report, "Digital Footprints." To this I add, Second-Hand data, data that others consciously collect about us & post with or without our consent. This could be a student capturing a podcast of a class--with our knowledge, or a student video--captured when we weren't looking.

 

Even if you aren't digitally active, you should be. You should be shaping your professional digital footprint before you are forced to react to what others post about you.

 

Beyond that, as educators, we also have a responsibility to scaffold our students' use of technology--and by extension begin to scaffold the way in which they build their digital footprints.

 

The explosion of social networking & identity aggregation services have made this an increasingly important aspect of professionalism. Scaffolding in the form of school/district/institutional policies would help greatly--as long as they are informed by current practice.

 

Feel free to post questions, comments, resources and issues here.

[Sandy Hirtz]

It makes sense to shape an online profile. Do you have specific advice on how to do this? Can you explain what you mean by scaffolding?