On Digital Footprints
I wonder about how we are going to perceive “digital footprints a decade or two from now. I remember begin very concerned over a decade ago about my digital footprint. I tried to be diligent about monitoring what information about me was (easily) available on the web and where I left my overt presence. I realized as I thought about this question, that my perceptions about my digital footprint have shifted. Somewhere along the way, I became less concerned about some aspects of what is available. I think this has to do with the shear challenge of trying to monitor something in the work I do. The recognition of the shift for me makes me wonder about the perceptions and attitudes of younger people today who grew up in a digital world very different from the one I was in for the first 20 years of my life (the first time I used a computer was in my mid-twenties). I venture to guess that the concept of a digital footprint (in the context of what info might be available about them) will mean even less to them a decade from now.
I am still thoughtful about what I say however. I try to imagine if I could defend any online utterance 20 or thirty years from now. I see this a slightly different discussion than the information that is available about me. We are increasingly trying to help students understand that the nature of digital world makes records of our choices in ways that they often to not yet understand. These are important discussions to have. However, there is a sense of loss in this. While it is important to help students understand that we need to be accountable for our actions and words, I wonder about the effect on people when we fear that everything we do or say may come back to haunt us in the future.
On Copyright
This is an apropos topic this week for a few reasons. First, I was talking today with other educators about some samples of student work that was originally intended to be posted onto a BC Ministry of Education website, and how, some great samples couldn’t be used because the students had used images they had taken from the web without proper permissions. It reminded me of how common that is in so many classes and is not something that I have seen talked about in many elementary classrooms I have been in. If we want our students to be thinking more seriously about copyright as adults, we need to begin the conversations early as they are increasingly immersed in the web in earlier and earlier grades.
Second, I have been in numerous conversations this last year about cultural appropriation with respect to First Nations cultures and knowledge. This topic continues to surface as more BC educators integrate First Peoples content into classrooms. It has been an interesting challenge to help some people understand that there are narratives in First Nations families, communities, or nations that are “owned” by the family, community, or nation, and that permission needs to be given before the narratives can be shared. The only way to help explain this has been to compare that ownership to a form of cultural copyright, and that in First Nations perspectives, that protocol has as much validity as a Canadian copyright law.
Third, I was recently reminded of the need to continue the work about issues of ownership and appropriation with our own colleagues. I am working on a resource development project, and last week a colleague in the project sent me a document that had been sent to him. He said it looked interesting and might be useful for our work. I should take a look at it and let him know. To my surprise the document he had sent was about 90% word for word taken from a blog I wrote, with a few other sentences thrown in. Nowhere on the document was there any indication that the information had been taken from my blog. It was an interesting experience to say the least.