This week we learned about our digital footprint and internet safety as well as copyright and creativity. I really enjoyed exploring these topics as it gave me a lot to think about and I think it is a very important topic for everyone to be educated on.
Helping our students manage their digital footprints does seem like a bit of a daunting task to me, especially for the middle school aged students. I really liked Jesse’s method of treating what his children do on the internet each day as a normal thing to be discussed. I think it is very important to normalize the use of the internet in daily life because it is a tool people use daily and trying to instill fear will only work to everyone’s detriment. Therefore, as an educator I think it is important for us to keep students informed on the uses and dangers of the internet just as any other tool can be dangerous if not used responsibly. I’ve attached a video that can be used in a classroom as it is pre-teens and teens talking about their own experiences with social media and their digital footprint.
The most interesting thing I found when I googled myself was my blank LinkedIn profile that I had to make for a class several years ago. I had completely forgotten I even had a LinkedIn profile and will now have to delete it. Facebook results for people with the same name as me also came up but my profile did not appear.
I think my use of social media will remain pretty similar to what is now. Luckily my parents taught my siblings and I to be careful of what we put on the internet and that if we wouldn’t say or do it in real life you shouldn’t do it on the internet. Thanks to them I’ve always been pretty responsible when using social media and the internet. However, I definitely feel like I need to be even more cautious as a teacher of what I post online.
I also wanted to briefly reflect on the documentary Remix Manifesto that we had to watch for class. I really enjoyed this documentary and it really got me thinking about copyright issues. I already had some pre-existing knowledge on issues involving sampling and music, but I appreciated how this documentary went further into the issues. It also shocked me that copyright laws were originally made to encourage people to create and now they make people scared of getting sued. It is very interesting to note that Girl Talk actually has their music on Spotify now which makes me wonder about how the streaming revenue would work for them.
I would have loved to make a slow motion movie for this week, but unfortunately I have a windows computer and as such don’t have access to iMovie. Maybe if I have spare time in the coming weeks I will make one for a future blog post. Instead I have made an internet safety poster using Canva! I’m really enjoying how easy Canva is to use and I had a lot of fun creating this poster. I think having a short informative poster on internet safety present in the classroom is a good thing to have. The teacher can go over it at the beginning of the year with their students and refer back to it if need be. It also can serve as a reminder for the students during the school year. This is a brief one I have made, but I think it could definitely have more tips and tools for students to use.
