Today’s blog post is around online citizenship & digital footprints
What Are Online Citizenship & Digital Footprints
Online Citizenship is the concept of being identifiable as a citizen of the internet, or of the modern age. Some people are actively engaged in this, and create online profiles using social media or other apps, but others are online citizens simply by being famous or noteworthy. This ties in to a digital footprint, which is a record of your actions, pictures, and opinions online that is permanent. Some of this is stored in metadata, but some is stored on live websites that you can see at any time. For example this is a list of sd63 teachers at Parkland secondary school.
A screenshot of the Parkland Secondary school staff directory.
Reflection
At this point, almost all of us are online citizens whether we like it or not, there are too many socially expected things that almost require us to be online. We all have some kind of online presence, even by nature of taking this course, or in our future as teachers in the public system, our names will be online. This is positive, as it keeps us accountable to our words and actions. Modern “cancel culture” is actually a useful thing in my mind, it allows us to hold people accountable, and when they say things that are inappropriate it is not lost in the wind. That being said, I do also think that this is a major issue that will create a culture of extremely isolationist and homogeneous thought, some times there are good reasons to go against the status quo and having the ability to be wrong without any major consequence is a good thing for society generally. Additionally, the ability to search for any individual means that some things that people, even teachers, that they may not want seen by their students or the public means that we have no choice for certain subjects.
