Most of my students have their own smartphones and all of them have Chromebooks. While at school, all students have access to technology through the WiFi and Chromebooks provided by my district. Also, students have access to their smartphones that they use, too. The potential positive impact through using technology is huge for students; however, too many students are using technology for social media, which isn’t bad per se, but they aren’t acquiring and practicing other technological skills so much. Skills like evaluation of a digital source for credibility, knowing how to use Boolean operators, how to use the searching techniques to find the specific information they’re looking for in a sea of sources, and learning new programs as technology advances. These are just a few out of many more. The skills one needs to evaluate technology and learn how to use that technology as a tool to improve themselves is what students need to walk away with.
While students in my district have access at school to WiFi, they may not have it at home. Net neutrality ensures access but what if the students don’t have WiFi to benefit from that access? As schools, especially high schools, move to more of a digital format, there is a real concern of access and equality for those students who can't access the internet on their Chromebooks from home. Locally, Comcast offers low cost internet but what if they can’t afford that? If students are required to use technology at home to work on assignments/projects, access needs to be provided at home, too.
Our students are using technology daily and in doing so are cultivating a digital footprint/digital tattoo. According to TeachThought a digital footprint is “the record or trail left by the things you do online”. Because our students are digital natives their footprint can be fairly large, especially when they connect their name to their activities. An unintentional digital footprint is simply what’s recorded by one’s digital activities. An intentional digital footprint is when a user cultivates their digital tattoo by creating a positive record online for others to see. TeachThought in their article, “12 Tips for Students to Manage Their Digital Footprint has some suggestions: be kind, helpful, and understanding, know that sending is like publishing forever, and to use digital tools to manage your footprint to name a few of them.
As far as students’ public EPortfolios, they shouldn’t post personal information that they don’t want the world to see. Their EPortfolios should be thought of as professional and exemplify good character. Students need to be taught how to stay safe and what protocols to follow when they post on their EPortfolios.
12 Tips For Students To Manage Their Digital Footprints. (22 January 2020).
Teachthought.com. Retrieved March 5, 2020, from https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/11-tips-for-students-tomanage-their-digital-footprints/
Figueroa, A. (2017, December 13). How A Deregulated Internet Could Hurt America's
Classrooms. Retrieved March 5, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/12/13/570262813/how-a-deregulated-internet-could-hurt-america-s-classrooms
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