The digital footprints we leave have long term effects on our personal and professional lives. We capture moments from our personal lives, our professional lives and spiritual lives….and share them without hesitation. This opens the door for others to have a front row seat of our lives. I share family pictures, outing with friends, ministries that I work with and admire and some work related topics.
There are many factors that I didn't consider and still may be naive about. Saftey issues for one. Some of my fiends caution protecting my privacy and my families' for so many reasons. There was a story where I live where there was a police officer met a girl online ( on purpose) and was at her house in a mater of hours. He shared with her parents how their daughter was putting herself art risk online and how he connected with her, pretended to be someone he wasn't and was able to locate where she lived. . Another friend told me of their friends daughter going to meet the love of her life ( who she met online) in Chicago and this person was not the young man as he portrayed online. This young teenage girl did make it back home safe. In short, we have to be aware of what our children are doing online and knowledgable of what's out there and the activities they are involved in.
There is the HUGE issue of cyber bullying. This is toxic. Lives are hurt, wasted time is spent looking at instagram and watching everyone else having the best time ever and feeling left out. Kids are obsessed with taking self portraits and showing the world…and we are not teaching them proper guidelines.
MANY parents have shared that their kids are texting at all hours of the night/early morning on school nights…consistently!!! These are parents of kids who are high achievers and overall look like they are doing good in school. These are what many call the 'good kids' who are making bad choices. One parent told me of a 5th grader " I make my daughter turning her phone by 11 each night. My first response to that and teaching digital citizenship is to kick myself first for allowing my kids to have this much access. Second is to take the phones and devices away. This is not effective because even though they are fine without them as soon as they get them back the same problems arise: too much time screens, not getting homework done, drama….
Having the discussions on digital citizenship recently with my college student and 2 elem kids is slowly taking root. This will be a process. It has been a huge learning process for myself. The last 5 years have been a huge eye opening experience as far as how the media can be used and I am excited to learn how to use it for my professional growth. A few rules of thumb I try to live by ( not always successful)
1. Add value to other people by what you read and what you post/message/share
2. When texting or messaging and gossiping….decline the opportunity. Only share what you would say to the persons face and better yet resolve it with that person IN PERSON.
3. All the activities we engage in online leave a trail that ltells our story. Kind of like a check book register. You can tell hat is important to a per on by the checks they write: food, eating, shopping, recreational activities….you can tell the character of a person by what he/she posts and future companies looking to hire will research who you are online….to see if you are a fit for their company.
A role we can play in making sure our students have a positive soil networking footprint is to have them write up their profile, which will cause them to really think and reflect on their life and how they want to be viewed. This link http://www.careerbuilder.com/Article/CB-916-Getting-Ahead-Will-Your-Social-Networking-Profile-Get-You-Hired-or-Fired/ has awesome tips on marketing yourself and creating digital footprints for students on a career path. I envision creating lessons where students read a profile and guess who the person is. We have to model what extraordinary profile looks like.
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