Digital Citizenship

Leaving a wonderful digital footprint in our world today.

     I have already talked with a few of my 3rd and 4th grade classes about leaving digital footprints and how these things can cause them to lose prospective scholarships for college, and or jobs in the future.  We talked about how prospective colleges and people hiring for jobs can look up those things that they have posted on Facebook, Instagram, twitter, and any other social media websites that they post things on.
     We explored why they should have good usernames and long mixed up passwords so that no one can gain access to their information online.  I talked with them about how anyone can claim to be a child of the same age as them, but in reality they could very well be an adult trying to find out information about them for a myriad of reasons.  I informed them that some people only want to find out where they live or if they are going to be home so they could do bad things such as steal from their houses..  We discussed never giving out any kind of information to anyone online since they do not personally know most of the people that they communicate with online.
     I asked them about doing something to someone else that they might not want done to them and if that was appropriate in face to face living as well as in the digital world.  That is a discussion that we have on a daily basis when our students don't understand how when they do something to someone else and hurt their feelings that it might feel that same way if that person did it to them.
     I expressed how important it was to make sure that they are not leaving a negative digital footprint and to always leave a positive digital footprint that even their parents would be proud of.