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Digital Citizenship is a concept which helps technology leaders, teachers and parents to understand what technology users such as students or teachers or even parents should know about to use technology properly. Being good at being a digital citizen means that you correctly follow the rules it takes to be safe, responsible and legal while using technology.

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contributed 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. We'll talk about ways you can help students understand and manage their digital footprints before they get themselves in trouble.
The Definition Of A Digital Footprint
Simply put, a digital footprint is the record or trail left by the things you do online. Your social media activity, the info on your personal website, your browsing history, your online subscriptions, any photo galleries and videos you've uploaded - essentially, anything on the Internet with your name on it. Digital natives like today's students rarely think twice about putting their names on things online, so their footprints can be pretty wide.

Luckily for us all, most of the major sources of personal information can be tweaked so we share only certain things with the general public. There are even some third-party bonus tools available to manage the parts of our digital footprints we might not know were there.

For students having grown up in a social/digital environment, helping them see where and how they're vulnerable may be the most critical step. If they're not suitably motivated, very little of what you say will be compelling.

But after a little Google searching and social media dots connecting, just seeing the breadth of info about us that exists online is enough to spur them to action.
What To Tell Your Students About Monitoring Their Digital Footprints: 11 Tips 1. Be kind, helpful, and understanding
Or put another way, demonstrate digital citizenship.

This may not seem like a way to practically 'manage your digital footprint,' but part of managing your digital footprint isn't just about privacy and anonymity. In large part, one of the most effective ways to 'manage' your footprints is to make sure that the prints you do leave are good ones.
2. Use privacy settings
Let's talk Facebook, shall we? Chances are pretty good that your students can be counted among the 1.3 billion monthly active users of the social media giant, and there's practically no other website that contains such a breadth and depth of personal information.

Encouraging students to put all of their social media accounts, including Facebook, on a short leash might be the most important step toward helping them manage their digital footprint. Look into Facebook's proprietary privacy tips or get the works from Lifehacker.com with it's "Always Up-to-Date Guide to Managing Your Facebook Privacy," then inform students about the steps they can take. Better yet, just pass the links along.

Complete privacy on Twitter is simple - you just choose to protect your tweets under 'security and privacy' on the account settings page - but encouraging students to do so might do more harm than good. Some teachers have gotten great results using Twitter in education, and a class full of students with protected tweets might interfere with that.
3. Keep a list of accounts
Then delete the ones you no longer use. That myspace page you signed up for? Don't just forget about it-find it and delete it.

One tip: Use Pocket (and add the Pocket button to your browser-for Google Chrome, for example). Every time you sign up for an account, add that site to your 'Pocket' account and tag it 'Account.' Then, every six months, go in and deactivate/remove dormant accounts you no longer need or use.
4. Don't overshare
Perhaps the best tip for helping students maintain privacy on twitter is one that can be applied across the whole spectrum of social networking tools: Don't overshare.

As much of an alien concept as it may be to students these days, the only sure-fire way to avoid digital footprint trouble is for them to keep quiet about anything they wouldn't want the world to know. This includes usernames, aliases, passwords, last names, full-names-as-usernames, pictures, addresses, and other important information but also their moods and boyfriends and girlfriends and
5. Use a password keeper
This is more of a security thing, but the worst kind of footprint is the one you didn't make that contains all of your sensitive information. It's too much work to remember 50 different passwords, and every site has their own unique rules.

Until someone solves this problem, the best solution is likely a password keeper
6. Google yourself
You may be surprised what you find.
7. Monitor linking accounts
When you link your facebook or twitter account to that new site (whatever site that might be), you may not realize-or care at the moment-what you're giving it access to. It's usually safest to use a secondary email address to sign-up for new sites rather than granting this kind of access.
8. Consider using an anonymous secondary email
Whether you're communicating with someone new or signing up for a new social media platform, it can be useful to have a secondary email address.
9. At least skim the terms and conditions
Few people read every word of every Terms & Conditions page-and even if you did, you may not understand them all and how they can and might impact you. But to not even have the slightest idea what you're agreeing to when you do 'accept' those terms and conditions only has the potential to harm any legacy of your use of a site, platform, or page (i.e., your digital footprints).
10. Know that sending is like publishing-forever
Every time you send a message, post, or picture, you're publishing it the same way CNN does a news story. And the internet never forgets.
11. Understand that searches are social
There's another side to your digital footprint, too - it's not always information that you choose to make public. Remember, with or without privacy controls, Facebook still records and uses every scrap of information it gets to better determine its users' marketing demographics. Like HIPAA data, digital data privacy matters-thus recent GDPR laws.

Google pulls the same trick with search and browsing habits. If a student is logged into their Google account, the service tracks every keyword they search, every web page they visit, and every time they visit Youtube.

There are ways, however, to control the bits of deep data that we leave strewn around. First of all, even though Google is practically an official synonym for 'web search,' it isn't actually the only game in town. Less profit-motivated search engines like DuckDuckGo.com and bing may take a little getting used to, but they can sometimes make clearer efforts to protect users' browsing privacy.
12. Use digital tools to manage your digital footprint
A host of browser extensions and app add-ons can also limit the surreptitious capture of personal information. VPNs, VPN protocols, and other browser tools and website opt-outs, to name a few. (You can read more about TeachThought's Privacy Policy here, for example.)
Conclusion
There are also some extreme measures. Browsing from behind a virtual private network, or VPN, puts a layer of thick fog between online activity and real-world identity. If even that isn't enough for your suddenly privacy-hungry students, there's also the nuclear option.

You may have heard of Tor, the multi-layered proxy client that's a go-to for anyone looking to access the fabled Deep Web. By routing your IP address through multiple proxies, Tor protects users from anyone anywhere ever knowing who they are or what they're looking at.

Of course, full online anonymity would also require students to avoid all login-based media (including app stores like Apple's App Store and Google Play), which can be a harder task than they're ready to accept. It may also be important to remind them that while we're not browsing in a vacuum and we're very rarely actually anonymous, most of our deep data is probably pretty benign.

Just make sure to let them know that everything that they post, tweet, comment or like is going down on their permanent record. Honestly, everything. That ought to get them thinking, at least.
Justin Boyle is a writer and multimedia designer who lives and works in Austin, Texas 12 Tips For Students To Manage Their Digital Footprints

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12 Tips For Students To Manage Their Digital Footprints

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contributed 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.

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What is a digital footprint?

A digital footprint is all of the information online about a person either posted by that person or others, intentionally or unintentionally. Filling out a form, leaving a blog comment, updating your status, checking into a location, emailing or IMing a friend, posting a photo, visiting a website, using a search engine... everything you do online leaves a trail. This trail is your digital footprint.

Understanding how to manage your online reputation or "digital footprint" is a challenging process. To complicate matters further, it's not just your own online actions you need to worry about-what others say and post about you also contributes to your digital footprint.

"Today our digital footprint is our new first impression, and it starts taking shape the minute we go online." - Diana Graber, CyberWise

Managing your digital footprint

Do you know what your digital footprint says about you? Below are two easy steps to help you identify whether or not your online "first impression" aligns with how you want others to see you now and in the future.

Google yourself.
Google yourself by typing your full name into Google's search box. Keep in mind people might search for you in many different ways.
Example: Jane Doe, janedoe@anymail.com, Jane Doe, teacher, etc.

Questions to ask yourself: Were there any surprises? Were you happy with the search results? Was there anything you wish you could change?

Use Google Alerts to monitor what others are saying about you.
You can sign up for Google Alerts to receive email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) about you by simply visiting the site and entering your name. You can set the frequency of updates to "as-it-happens," "once a day," or "once a week."
Tips to keep your digital footprint safe

1. Always remember to log off when you have finished with an online service.

2. Do not enter your password on a website using free public Wi-Fi. Hackers on the network can snoop on what you're doing.

3. Remember that most of the websites you visit will make a note of your visit and may also track the websites you visit before and after their website.

4. When you sign up for a new social media site, or when you buy something, you are giving personal information to the people who manage those websites. That information is often shared, circulated, and sometimes sold.

5. Remember that anyone can copy and paste anything you say online, and they can then send it to others, or publish it on the Internet.

Video

Common Sense Media created the below video used in one of our secondary digital citizenship lessons "Trillion Dollar Footprint."

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What is a digital footprint? A digital footprint is all of the information online about a person either posted by that person or others, intentionally or unintentionally. Filling out a form, leaving a blog comment, updating your status, checking into a location, emailing or IMing a friend, posting a photo, visiting a website, using a search engine...

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What is a digital footprint and why is it important to know about it?

Students learn to protect their own privacy and respect others' privacy. Our digital world is permanent, and with each post, students are building a digital footprint. By encouraging students to self-reflect before they self-reveal, they will consider how what they share online can impact themselves and others. Awareness about one's own digital footprint can also help to support digital literacy.

What to Know

In a world where anything created online can be copied, pasted, and sent to thousands of people in a heartbeat, privacy starts to mean something different than simply guarding personal information. On the positive side, this culture of sharing holds tremendous promise for young people to express themselves, collaborate, and find support for their ideas and interests. However, the ease of online disclosure also poses risks for young people. A decision made in the spur of a moment - a funny picture, a certain post - can resurface years later. Something originally sent to a friend can be sent to a friend's friend, and so on. That's how secrets become headlines and how false information spreads fast and furiously - to classmates, teachers, college admissions officers, future employers, or the public at large.

Why Teach It

Help your students ...

become aware of the "digital footprint" they leave online and reflect on the kind of personal information to share about themselves, depending on the content, context, and audience.

celebrate a "culture of sharing" through digital media while considering some possible harmful effects of over-sharing and Internet privacy.

learn to respect the privacy of others online when tagging, posting, or copying other' personal information.

By guiding your students to self-reflect before they self-reveal, you can help them learn to consciously manage their own privacy online, as well as respect the privacy of others. If students aren't careful about what, how, and to whom they disclose information online, it may be used or interpreted in ways they never intended. Help them understand the public and permanent nature of the Internet so they can begin to build a positive digital presence.

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Digital Footprint & Reputation | Common Sense Education

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What is a digital footprint and why is it important to know about it? Students learn to protect their own privacy and respect others' privacy. Our digital world is permanent, and with each post, students are building a digital footprint.