How's your footprint?

So we have started our second course in our Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy course and our first focus is on digital footprints.

Our reading has taken us to an article, 'Protect Your Digital Footprint' by Fields Moseley, who appears to offer very little innovative thought other than... be careful your digital footprint may catch up with you when it comes to job interviews. A second reading, 'Your online reputation can hurt your job search' also failed to stimulate my brain much, although it did offer some good solutions to ensuring your online character is upheld in a positive light... basically remove the negative and promote the positive.

So in need of something a little more 'meaty' I searched around and found a few interesting read's. One of the major issues with our digital footprint is that it is not a footprint in the sand or mud, it is more like a wet-paint footprint... the key here is that the paint never dries, it is open to being reformed, redistributed and reconstituted. I was watching a great movie last night called doubt, in it the Catholic priest preaches about rumors. He gave the analogy of a rumor being like a feather pillow split open on a roof top, the feathers spread everywhere become almost impossible to pick up. In a similar way once we post or do something on the internet the 'wind' picks it up into the cloud, where it is almost impossible to retrieve. Scared?

A good read about some of the legal issues surrounding internet use can be found at Internet Attorney, a site focusing around legal issues on the internet, with specific regard to American citizens. Basically we need to be aware that the internet has no internal law, it is governed by the local governments from which the user accesses the site, therefore there are serious issues about what is acceptable and what is not as their is no norm. It was also interesting reading the Wikipedia article on internet privacy, to find out that the E.U. has passed a law that allows police throughout the E.U. remote access to anyone's personal computer without a search warrant! This raises serious issues about personal privacy and state control. Although it seemed a little out-dated the Australian 'Office of the Privacy Commissioner' has some good explanations on why you need to be careful online, and the different ways in which people obtain data on your activity, which all construct our digital footprint.

So what really is the issue here?

If we are 'doing stuff' and 'posting stuff' on the net that is not acceptable and this is coming back to bite us shouldn't we have thought first about what we were doing? The real issue is that most users are not aware of the visibility of what we are doing, in my mind this is the key issue...

Increased connection = Increased visibility.

If we want to be connected, we have to accept our actions can be seen by a wider range of people, this is reality. With any job position or career that is highly visible, people learn this quick. However, with a private computer hidden in a room in your house we are fooled into thinking we are not visible.

So what does this have to do with schools?

We ask our students to go online, we ask them to blog, we ask them to create in collaborative spaces, but are we ensuring they understand they are creating their own digital footprint throughout this process? Could these processes potentially harm their identity on the net? Are we putting them at risk with displaying their work to the world?

There is no doubt in my mind that if we expect students to participate online that we must teach them how to do this safely. It has to start with the schools 'Acceptable Use Policy', which must not just be a policy that protects the school, but protects the student. By focusing on protecting the student it will most likely meet the goal of protecting the school. It is our responsibility as educators to guide students in creating positive digital footprints and enlightening them of their visibility online. If we fail to do so we fail to protect the child, which is yet another role for the school to absorb!