I spend a lot of time online both for personal and professional use, so I know there has to be a lot of information about me online such as my digital footprint. I teach 2nd grade and as a technology coach, I preach digital citizenship to other teachers and my students. Recently during a dig cit lesson with my students we got to the topic about (never) sharing our personal information online and being aware that or information can be shared without us necessarily noticing. This led into a conversation about a digital footprint. Of course in order for the students to understand this topic, we had to start with what an actual footprint was. Needless to say, I was super excited when I saw the topic for this week since I was just teaching my students about this!
I am choosing to embrace my digital footprint, it’s there and it will always be there. I know that I need to be cautious about what I share (even in a blog post here!) and I love that I get to help students learn this at such an early age. My students (7-8 years old) all have Chromebooks at school and many, if not all, have a smart phone and/or tablet at home. All of course can access the internet, students are showing me new sites that I have never seen all the time. Thank you students for keeping me in the know! 😉 As someone who has a digital footprint (duh) I choose to use my knowledge to share with others (teachers and students) about how they can stay safe online.
It is INCREDIBLE the amount of information available online about anyone and everyone. I remember a while back doing a google search of my name and finding information about who I am related to and things about them- It is scary!
One of my favorite shows is Catfish on MTV. In this show people write into the host, Nev, and share their stories of relationships found online. People have these elaborate relationships and stories with people in some cases for many years and have never even met them in person. After finding information about the situation, Nev and his cohost get to work-on the internet. They are able to reverse image search pictures and find anywhere and everywhere online these images are posted. They can search phone numbers, names, places, anything and in a matter of minutes they know who an entire person is (or isn’t in the case of this show).
A quick google search can find anything-including things you think you have deleted or erased. I found a lot of information about me which also includes others who have the same name. I found several links to things with accounts or pages that are not me, but have the same name. As a huge Catfish show fan, I can only hope someone isn’t using my information to be a catfish and that there are others who may have a similar name as me!
EDTECH 543 SNL 