11 Tips For Students To Manage Their Digital Footprints

by Justin Boyle

If you've scratched your head over suggestions to manage your "digital footprint," you aren't the only one.

A surprisingly large percentage of people have never even heard the phrase, let alone thought about how to manage theirs responsibly. Among students, the percentage is probably higher. Read more here

The Social Media Myth

The myth about social media in the classroom is that if you use it, kids will be Tweeting, Facebooking and Snapchatting while you're trying to teach. We still have to focus on the task at hand. Don't mistake social media for socializing. They're different -- just as kids talking as they work in groups or talking while hanging out are different.

You don't even have to bring the most popular social media sites into your classroom. You can use Fakebook or FakeTweet as students work on this form of conversation. Edublogs, Kidblog, Edmodo, and more will let you use social media competencies and writing techniques. Some teachers are even doing "tweets" on post-it notes as exit tickets. You can use mainstream social media, too.

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For those who want to cut the cord with their internet identities, Who Is Hosting This has created a detailed guide that illustrates how you can completely disappear online. It starts with the simple stuff — like how to delete your Facebook accounts — and then gets more extreme. There are ways to falsify un-deletable accounts and even erase search results.

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An online activity that provides helpful guidance on how to keep your data and personal information more secure.

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Creative Commons provides an easy to use framework for adults and young people to make their own resources available to others in addition to helping them recognise resources they can adapt and repurpose themselves.

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"Facebook is the world's largest social network with more than 400 million people chatting and sharing their lives. It's important for parents to understand how social networks work so that you can help your child to stay safe online. But you might also be on Facebook and need a bit of help. With so many applications, external services and friend requests to deal with, keeping the right information private is becoming even more important."

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