Tech Task #1: Digital Foot Print


    What is a digital foot print? A digital foot print is comprised of all of the information that is available through the internet about an individual due to their online activity. A persons digital foot print is accessible to the public at all times. It is important for people to be aware of their digital footprint because it is always accessible to the public. That means that at any point in time someone can search their name and find out about that persons online identity. 

    For people in the education field I feel that it is even more important for them to be aware of their digital footprints. Prospective employers, future students and parents are likely to google you. What types of information are they going to find? What information do you want them to know and what do you want to keep hidden? 

    If someone where to google my name the majority of the information that they would find about me would be from when I was in high-school. A presentation I had to make in Grade 9, a lot information about the things I have pinned on Pinterest, photo contest submissions. There is also a rather unflattering photo from my first year of university on the go bobcats website. Aside from that one unflattering photo there is nothing that I would want to hide from the general public. 

    The first time that I ever learned about a digital foot print was way back in elementary school. I remember we had a police officer come in and give the while school a presentation about online safety. He talked briefly about digital foot prints but I had no idea what he was talking about. It wasn't until after Highschool that I actually fully understood what a digital foot print is. It had always been brought up in school in a way that was meant to terrify students so they wouldn't go poking around the internet. The police officers presentation consisted mainly of reenactments and true stories about all the extreme dangers of the web and online predators. He presented the digital foot print as a way for online predators to stalk people and find out private information about them. 

    I think that it is important to teach students about digital foot prints in a way that they will actually understand. I personally would love to see an end to this whole discouraging, fear building style of teaching, on all subjects, not just about the internet. Instead we should be teaching our students what a digital foot print is, how it is created, what that information is typical used for and how to monitor it.

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