If its Online It is Forever: Your Digital Citizenship

     A digital citizenship is similar to the traditional idea of citizenship because in both cases you are known by how you are coming across.  In real life, if you always show up not your best self you will begin to be seen as not a great person to be around. This is similar to online, where if you are constantly posting yourself doing things that are considered poor choices people are going to begin to see you as the type of person that makes poor choices. This can effect if you get hired, who wants to hang out with you and many other aspects of your life. However, unlike a traditional citizenship where you can move away from your problems or change your image, you cannot do this with a digital citizenship. This information will always be there, easily accessible online. This is what makes a digital citizenship more difficult, what you say and do online is permanent. Therefore, you need to be very careful about creating and maintaining a good digital citizenship.  Here is a short video describing our digital footprint:

     In life, you always want to put your best foot forward when dealing with other people.  This helps you get where you want to be in life and make connections that you want to make with other people. It is important that we teach students the importance of presenting yourself in the best light at all times, including when you are online. This is important because we want our students to be able to make their digital footprint the best one they can have. We also want to teach our students the importance of copyright and giving a creator credit for their own work.  In real life we would never get up in front of a room of people and say someone else's words, word for word, without giving them credit for it.  Why does this happen online? We must teach our students that this is not acceptable behavior and they must always give a creator the credit for their own work.

    The teacher should teach the students the importance of copyright and giving credit where credit is due. They also must protect the students from the dangers of the internet by teaching them to be cautious when they are on the internet. I also think teachers should educate students on the dangers of cyber bullying. This is an act that can be extremely damaging for students and leave severe, lifelong consequences. The teacher also must protect the students by making sure they stay on the website and content they are allowed to access, through both blockers and monitoring of computer use when it is being used in the classroom. This will help keep our students safe.

Always remember to take care of your digital footprint and be careful with what you put online. Teachers please teach your students that they need to take care of their digital citizenship. Here is a link to an infographic which will tell you about the laws that surround your students' internet usage.  The internet is a powerful tool that can do a lot of good if people remember that once it is on the internet it does not go away.

Citations:
Bray, Ollie. "We All Have a Digital Footprint" Comic. March 20, 2011. Retrieved February 23, 2018 from https://www.flickr.com/photos/olliebray/5542813754/in/photostream/.
GDST."Live My Digital for students: Digital Footprint". Online Video Clip. Youtube. 1 July 2016. Web. 23 February 2018.