One of the first things that people do when they are introduced to Google Earth is to check out their backyard. It’s a human trait in ego-ism, I suppose. It’s probably also one of the first digital footprints that you have whether you want it or not!
Close to checking out your house is checking yourself out with the Google Search engine. Now, the digital footprint gets a little bit more serious. It’s here where your content or content that others have created about you gets displayed. Now, the good folks at Google aren’t screeners of content. If it’s there and they find it, they’ll display it in search results. Good, bad, ugly, mis-spelled, it’s all there and discoverable if it’s posted online.
There were a couple of articles that caught my eye this past week enough for me to blog about them.
The first article was about a British university that was going to offer a Master’s program in Social Media. The second article dealt with the chance that British education would be revamped to include Social Media including Twitter.
The two seem to make a great deal of sense to me. Undoubtedly, the university course would dig deeply into the many ways that Social Media shapes society and learning. The K-12 approach should introduce students to the reach and power of the technology and the responsibility that comes from being a good digital citizen. Friends, employers, and even the curious can fire up Google or any other search engine and find all that they need to know about you.
The digital identity needs to be created early and like any good resume or CV, updated and checked frequently. Personally, there were too many important “Doug Peterson”s around to make that what I would use. However, there were fewer “dougpete”s and so an identity was born. I keep it updated here and here. Nothing spectacular or out of the ordinary but if you want to know about me, there it is. (or at least the part of me that I care to share…)
As the internet becomes increasingly social, students need to recognize the importance of the content that they publish. After all, this may be the business card of the future.
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doug --- off the record 