The “digital footprint” or, as others call it – “digital tattoo”, is something that I’ve been aware of for some time. It really started becoming apparent when I was enrolled in my Bachelor of Education program at UBC: there was a presentation at least once a semester with a tone of fear behind it. Each session contained warnings of students who were denied teaching certificates or educators fired from jobs for seemingly minor things they had posted online. One such example was a student from New York who was denied the awarding of her teaching certificate from her university for a photo on her MySpace. She was holding a red Solo cup with the word “Pirate” etched onto it (one of those write-on cups), and was wearing a pirate hat folded out of regular white paper. You couldn’t even see the contents of the cup! To this day I wonder if that story was made up to incite fear into our social media use. I guess I could Google it and probably find out, but I haven’t.
As I entered teaching, I was less cautious than my UBC colleagues but I did take precautions to lock down Facebook and other media. Some of my friends went as far as deleting and/or “hiding” the entirety of their photos from public view – even from their friend connections online. Later, when I joined Twitter, I held the attitude that the media had to host only professional content, and nothing personal. Over time, I realized that forging professional relationships has a personal element, and I began to share a little bit more about my life. It also helped that I found my fiancé through that very network; my personal life got to be pretty known to those people I was trying so hard to hide it from in the first place! Now, I share some of my Instagram photography openly, posting it to my Twitter account selectively, but I still keep my Facebook pretty locked up, even though I have many professional contacts there, too. Most of my photos are of travel, hikes, natural beauty, or family, but my fiancé and I are craft beer enthusiasts, so that gets snuck in every once in awhile.
When considering students, we constantly have conversations about digital citizenship and the impact of what they post online. I’ll reiterate here what Keri stated in her post – it isn’t a single unit of study, it needs to be an ongoing conversation. Personally, I use snippets from Common Sense Media’s Scope & Sequence (2016) as well as Media Smarts (2016) to inform my digital citizenship curriculum. As I shared in my post last week, I use a lot of social media and blogging in my classroom, and teach digital citizenship through actual use of the media. For example, lessons such as Paper Blogging provide great scaffolding for online conversations through commentary.
Even though my students are really young, I start working with them on image copyright and appropriate citations. Since asking them to format citations in APA is a bit much, I often ask them to provide a website list to me (they also learn keyboard shortcuts REALLY fast this way!). Additionally, I show them how to cite images and what kinds of images they can actually legally use. We use physical theft as an analogy to using copyrighted images or plagiarizing websites online. This is a very difficult concept for them, and we’re not perfect at it by any means. If I had to improve in one area, it would be this one – even though my students are only 8 and 9.
References
Common Sense Media. (2016). Scope & Sequence: Common Sense K-12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum. Retrieved from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators/scope-and-sequence
Media Smarts. (2016). Digital & Media Literacy. Retrieved from http://mediasmarts.ca/digital-media-literacy
I also follow the Common Sense Media and find it very helpful. I also recommend it to my friends and students. A group of my friends actually decided to create a company targeted on educating the public on how to be a good digital citizen. They called it CAFTT but never got to start it. I worked with them on all the slides and it was a very informative experience.
Hi Nidal,
Common Sense Media does provide a fantastic Scope & Sequence that is so easy to follow and share with other teachers! I’ve learned a lot about pedagogical approaches to digital citizenship through their tools, lessons, and activities. That’s too bad your students’ project never got off the ground, but the silver lining is that you learned a lot from it – and that is knowledge that you can pass onto other educators and students in the future!
Victoria
Hi Victoria;
I love the title of your post “Professional vs Personal vs Just Being Yourself”. It is a fine line that we have to walk, especially when working in this field. Being a professional means making relationships. It can be hard to do that if we are constantly on guard about what we share. I think it does involve an ongoing commitment on our part to recognize that what we are posting becomes part of a personal mosaic online. I think if we respect ourselves and each other, we can’t go far wrong. A sense of humour helps too. 🙂
Kind Regards,
Tanya
Hi Tanya,
I agree completely. Some of my best personal friendships and relationships were originally professional connections. It’s nice to have friends who have that common ground with you. When you surround yourself with enough of these people, like what happens in an online PLN, it can teach you to be more relaxed in the professional sphere overall. Yes, people in the real world have a beer or a glass of wine on Friday afternoon, and several educators I know will talk openly about this fact or post an image of themselves having a drink with colleagues or friends. However, if those same educators chose to have 4 drinks, they wouldn’t be posting a picture or talking about it then. It’s all about using discretion – teachers deserve to be viewed as a human beings, but always need to cognizant of the virtuous public image that they are socially expected to uphold. The balance is important, and you’re right – a sense of humour and well-justified reasons for posting image from the post-work pub night on Friday are good to have behind you.
Victoria
I too keep Facebook more personal, and Twitter more professional, since my Twitter use has pretty much stemmed for this course. At first I looked up bands, actors, and athletes to follow on Twitter, but then dropped a bunch and decided to keep it as a more professional space.
Hi Randy,
I keep those elements as a part of my social media, but I understand the view that those personal interests may need to be filtered out for some. Dean Shareski (again) is one of the people that I feel speaks well about this: we’re all people – with interests, hobbies, passions – and our social media use is allowed to reflect that, even in our professional spheres.
As you title pretty much lays it out it is a hard balancing act. It certainly seems like you have a good strategy for it thought.
I’m honestly a little taken aback by your description of the “be afraid, be very afraid” session at UBC. I also have a hard time believing that a teaching certificate was denied because of a red solo cup. It really seems like it is a bit heavy handed. I recall a similar session that had me paranoid every time I went to a pub. I can’t imagine if the sessions included the digital footprint as well.
Hi Jason,
I also think it was a little outlandish. This was also over 6 years ago and the world of social media hadn’t yet been tapped into very well by teachers. The teachers I know on Twitter who founded major educational discussion spaces didn’t do so until mid-late 2010/early 2011 to my knowledge. Either way, it was a pretty crazy experience and I know that myself and many of my colleagues made the move to lock Facebook down and hide old photo albums from our college-going days!