Ideas for Making a Purposeful and Professional Digital Footprint

The Innovative Parent explains there are two different types of digital footprints: Active and Passive. Passive footprints are not created deliberately by the user such as information uploaded to the internet by way of companies providing public information. An active digital footprint is very different. It is the deliberate creation of this footprint. Facebook and MySpace are perfect examples of this. Bloggers also have active digital footprints as they write to share thoughts, ideas, photos, videos and more to carve out their prints.

In a recent post innovative educator Will Richardson shared a story about a teacher with a provocative active digital footprint. He quoted this from a Washington Post article on teachers with Facebook/MySpace sites:

Alina Espinosa, a teacher at Clopper Mill Elementary School in Montgomery, had written on her Facebook page in the “About Me” section: “I only have two feelings: hunger and lust. Also, I slept with a hooker. Be jealous. I like to go onto Jdate [an online dating service for Jewish people] and get straight guys to agree to sleep with me.”

Asked about the page, Espinosa said: “I never thought about parents and kids [seeing it] before. That’s all I’m going to say.”

This begs the question, how can innovative educators begin preparing students, parents, and colleagues to create a positive, appropriate, and respectable digital footprint if they themselves are unaware their digital footprint will be viewed by unintended audiences, and are unaware of, and not purposeful about, their own digital footprint? I have five ideas to enable innovative educators to begin developing and modeling the establishment of a responsible, respectable, and professional digital footprint.

Five ideas to enable educators to develop and model a purposeful and professional digital footprint.

1-Model responsible footprinting with your own practices in blogging, commenting, social networking, and picture posting.
2-If you have established a professional blog, share it widely and proudly such as placing it in your email signature (if your employer will let you) and as Jeff Utecht suggests include your blog url when you comment on others blogs and in other forums. This enables others to see best practices and is a great way to get the conversation started.
3-Google yourself (aka ego surfing). If you have something posted online that you'd be uncomfortable having a current or future student, parent, colleague, or employer find, delete it (if you can) or request that it be deleted. There are ways an aggressive internet detective can still find this information, but most won't go through the trouble and the mere fact that you deleted it shows some level of responsibility.
4-If you do have online personal information and/or interests you wouldn't want discovered, use an unidentifiable screen name/avatar. This means you may need to update your screen name/avatar in your existing online presence.
5-Engage in the conversation and professionally comment, reply, and present online, onsite, and at conferences.

Hopefully these ideas are helpful for some readers and I’d love to know others experiences with negative or positive repercussions from digital footprints. If this topic is of interest click the following links from a 20-something career expert who shares another perspective on why the lines between personal and professional lives should be blurred and why the whole idea of our lives being available for public display is actually pretty cool.

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My journey in the world of ICT's in Learning and Teaching...

Responsible digital footprints

Posted by Greg Carroll on May 9, 2008 7:21 PM | Permalink

Mandate Against Professional Blog URLs in NYC DOE Signature

Apparently I prompted a mandate by the NYC DOE that no employee can have their blog url in their email signature. I find this particularly upsetting because as the PD manager for the Office of Instructional Technology for the NYC DOE I think having a blog is a great way to get the digital footprint conversation going as well as model best practices for using 21st Century tools to build professional learning communities and personal learning networks that support the work we do. In fact, I think it would be terrific if all educators with professional blogs celebrated and shared their work in their email signatures. Heck, I think it would be great if educators were just consumers in the blogosphere and if we held them accountable to standing behind a blog url in their signature…that would be a fantastic professional learning vehicle for them and modeling tool for their students and/or staff.

But alas, as of today I received a call informing me that as a follow up to the standardization email I received last month, legal has advised that if you work at the NYC DOE your blog url must be removed from your signature. Additionally, I will have to add a disclaimer to all posts and comments (that I will receive soon from legal) that goes something like...the views expressed here are my own and do not represent that of the DOE. What happened to the idea of celebrating the successes among us and promoting the idea of authentic publishing and sharing and collaboration of ideas? I'm okay with a disclaimer on my blog (although I think a disclaimer on comments is extreme), but not so happy on the mandate to squelch the sharing of the existence of my blog ideas by eliminating the url from email signatures.

I'm well aware of other ways to share my blog url, but putting it along with my contact information helps identify me with more than just and email and phone. It enables me to connect my name to my ideas in a signature which enables my network to learn and grow as well. Yes they are my ideas, but so are all my emails. If people want to brand themselves (with a professional blog or an ethical quote for that matter) and share and establish their safe, appropriate, and acceptable professional digital footprint...shouldn't they be able?

Thoughts? Opinions?

Follow the Classroom 2.0 conversation on this topic here.

Further Reading from Joyce Valenza.

What Not to Blog Part 1

What Not to Blog Part 2

5 Innovative Ideas for Student Teams that Support 21st Century Teaching & Learning

I have been helping technology-rich schools develop student support teams designed to improve a school's capacity to integrate technology into teaching and learning for about three years. Yesterday, I was at the annual MOUSE Educators Conference which inspired me to realize even more innovative ways school’s student support teams can benefit students, teachers, and entire schools in creating and maintaining a successful 21st Century environment. MOUSE is an organization that creates technology-based opportunities that motivate students to succeed in today’s information society.

These support teams are great for students because they begin developing a passion and expertise in using and teaching technology skills which they can carry with them for the rest of their lives. Students also learn about professionalism and customer service. Many Faculty advisers have students fill out applications or submit resumes for a coveted Squad position and participate in an interview. Students are given guidance and advice on how to do apply and interview using curriculum that includes videos and activities from MOUSE. These students are given special shirts at many schools and become the esteemed supermen and women of the school able to heroically fix technical issues in a single bound. But the teams are much more than just that. These student support teams provide students with a sense of belonging. In many cases, just like sports teams, members must also maintain an expected school record for classes, attendance, and behavior. After doing working with students support teams for several years I was thrilled to discover five new and innovative ideas schools can implement with their student support teams.

Social Networks

It appears MOUSE is ready to jump on the Social Network bandwagon. At the conference they had participants engage in an activity called MOUSESPACE (ala MySpace). Participants drew a possible social network for their MOUSE Squads (which I recommend are groups within one space) where squads can interact with other teams. Each Squad creates a page where they describe their squad and post a picture, provide contact info, indicate the numbers of boys/girls, identify strengths and challenges, and provide tags indicating “Stuff my squad loves” and “Values my squad” shares. I thought it was such a good idea I spoke to the program director Ted Bongiovanni about getting the ball rolling and setting up a space for the faculty advisors of student support teams right now and he gave me the thumbs up to start a group at The Innovative Educators Social Network. I encourage you to join The Student Support Team Group.

Explore Engaging Educational Games

At the MOUSE conference Karen Sideman of Games4Change and Parsons School of Design led a discussion of gaming and learning. She explained how good gaming environments make for good learning environments, and how educators can capitalize on game-play to access content and concepts from throughout the curricular landscape. While I agree this is a wonderful and meaningful direction in education, it is often difficult to incorporate in the curriculum, especially when students and teachers have not had an opportunity to test this out. What a great idea for a student support team! These team members and their faculty advisors can be the pioneers making the connections about how these games can be valuable, test them out and share the successes and connections so they may eventually be incorporated into the school day. Read more ideas about how to Infuse Life into Your Lessons with Digital Gaming in my blog entry 5 Easy Ways for Innovative Educators to Engage Students Until The End of The School Year.

Recycle Computers for Use with Your Student Support Teams

During the MOUSE spotlight a presenter shared a great idea for recycled computers! Work with companies to put together packages for student support teams to allow them to get down and dirty with equipment in ways that they are not allowed with warranted devices. They are taking computer parts and putting them in packages and a curriculum has been written to accompany this. The activities are designed to provide students with an opportunity to touch and feel the internal components of a computer. They also learn to identify characteristics and features of the devices. The “Computer in a Box” Kit is a safe way for students to experience the insides of the system unit in a safe environment. Visit the Computer in a Box Lesson to find out how to do this with your squad. Visit Lessons for Student Support Teams for more lessons written by NYC Faculty Advisers.

Create Online Tutorials
What a great idea!!! At the MOUSE Conference Dan Beeby, Associate Director of Services for Columbia University's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning showed participants how to create how to's that help. What a great idea to have students create online tutorials to answer all the common things they are asked to assist with and the faculty advisor can collect these in one place (wiki, website, blog). You can find out how to create screencasts here. For samples of ScreenCasts to share with your iSquad as a model for their work or aid to their work check out http://demogirl.com/.

Have a Film Crew

During the MOUSE spotlight presenters shared that some MOUSE squads attend every event to capture photos and video of what occurs throughout the year. This is captured for many uses including posting instantly after events. Capturing for the end of the year celebration slide show collection. Capturing for the year book and more. The student support team members are further celebrated because they are the one’s often distributing the coveted Yearbooks or CDs. Some schools are using these for fund raisers too.

If you have tried any of these ideas or have additional ideas, please share by commenting on this post.

Great Way to Find Popular Keywords for Your Blog or Other Published Content

One reason I love my blog is that when I'm sitting alone and I find something really cool that I’m excited about and want to share, with my friends...now I can. One reason I love Twitter is that I can tell people I just found something really cool about [fill in cool thing here] so go look at my blog.

So what did I find?

I found this great tool for bloggers and others with published web content on Google called the Keyword Tool which is perfect for people like me who wonder about tagging blogs and other published items. Sometimes I kind of just put whatever thoughts come to mind but I wonder are these the words people would really use to find me??? Well wonder no more! You can use the Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas AND you can get data about how often those words have been searched last month and on average. How cool is that?

Thoughtshot of my mind…ugh, does this mean I should go back to my old posts to find the right keyword?

Here's how it works:

First you put in the url of your blog if you want keywords for your whole blog or the url for a particular post if you want keywords for one post.

Then you select “Get Keyword Ideas” and it analyzes your site.

Then Wah lah!!!..You get this cool chart with keyword categories and data about search volume. Here is what I selected from the keyword suggestions for this post: keyword tool, keyword generator, keyword suggestion tool, keyword generator, keyword finder, blog traffic, promoting blog, blog tools.

Now this tool was actually made to go hand in hand with those people who want to use Google to advertise and hence come up to the top of Google on the right-hand column under sponsored links and by default we benefit too. Here are some of Google’s tips for using the tool.

What are some advanced tips for using the Keyword Tool?

The Keyword Tool is a great way to find new keywords for your ad campaigns. For example, if you run a budget hotel, the Keyword Tool can suggest helpful related keywords like "hotel discounts" or "motels." Adding these alternate terms to your ad group keyword lists can help you find new customers that you might otherwise have missed.

The Keyword Tool is especially helpful in three situations:

• When you first create a new ad group
• When your current keywords are performing poorly and you need to find better options
• When you have one keyword that really works well and want to find more like it

Remember that the Keyword Tool works best with short keywords of one or two words in length. "Budget hotel" will get better results than "inexpensive place for lodging while on a trip." That's because if your keyword includes many words, the Keyword Tool may have a hard time determining the most important words and delivering the appropriate alternatives.

Ready for some advanced tips? Try using the Keyword Tool to:

• Find keywords based on your site content. Instead of entering your own keywords, try using the Website Content option. It lets you enter the URL of your business website, or of any site related to your business. The AdWords system will then scan your page and then suggest relevant keywords. (This feature is available only in some languages.) Don't hesitate to enter the URLs of related sites, or even of your competitors' sites, to learn what keywords they might be advertising on themselves.
• Create new, separate ad groups with similar keywords. We recommend creating several ad groups in each campaign, each with a small, narrowly-focused set of similar keywords. Use the Keyword Tool to discover relevant keywords, then divide them into lists of 5 to 20 similar terms. See examples of ad groups promoting a single product or service and multiple products or services.
• Identify negative keywords. The Keyword Tool can show you off-topic keywords that users may be thinking about. Suppose you sell cut flowers and you give the Keyword Tool the keyword "flowers." It may suggest the related term "gardens," and you may want to add that term to your ad group as a negative keyword. That will keep your ad from showing on searches for "flower gardens" or similar terms. This helps make sure only interested customers see your ads.
• Find synonyms - or not. The Use synonyms box in the Descriptive words or phrases option is always checked by default. (This means it might suggest "bed and breakfast" as a synonym for the keyword "hotel.") If you uncheck the box, the tool will suggest only keywords that contain at least one of the terms that you entered.
• Specify a language and location. If you're using the Keyword Tool while signed in to your account, you may see an option to tailor results to a particular location and language. If you happen to be targeting Spanish speakers who live in France, make sure you set the Keyword Tool to that language and location.
• Start broad and then get specific. Try broad terms like "flowers" in the Keyword Tool first. Then try specific terms like "red roses" or "miniature cactus."

The Keyword Tool also makes it easy to add keywords to your ad group if you're already signed in to your account. Just click 'add' next to the appropriate results. If you're not signed in to your account and you're using the standalone Keyword Tool, you can just copy the keywords to a separate document, then paste them into your ad group once you're signed in.

Ponderings
When I find things like this I always wonder are others thinking, "are you just finding this???" or are they thinking, "Oh wow. That's cool." I hope others have found this useful. I’m excited to test the tool out for this post. IIf you have some great ideas, tips or experiences with keywords, tagging please share.

Social Networking for Innovative Educators

When innovative educator Will Richardson speaks to audiences he often asks how many people belong to social networks (aside from dating sites*)? About 10% of hands go up depending on the audience. He follows that with how many people teach MySpace or Facebook? Usually no hands are raised. These are good questions and when I’ve been in the audience I put my hand up only half way because while I do have a MySpace account, I don’t really use it at all, so I almost feel like I’m cheating. MySpace just isn’t a place for me, even though I want it to be if for no reason other than to be more in touch with the digital natives. The reality for innovative educators though, is if we don’t quickly find value in what we are doing, we don’t pay it much attention. Although I see myself as an innovative educator, and wish I was more active in MySpace, and even taught it...I wasn't more active and don’t teach it because I wasn’t a deeply involved or experienced online social networker.

And, then came Ning…

I love Ning and think it is one of the greatest tech tools to come around. Ning (www.ning.com) is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for FREE in seconds. Since October I have joined Classroom 2.0 and EduBloggerWorld. These are real social networks that I have become involved and connected in and after participating for several months I can confidently raise my hand that I belong to and participate in a social network. And...not only am I a participant, today, I am excited to share that I launched my own social network called The Innovative Educator. Please join my network where I hope we will focus on educating innovatively through the lens of content areas i.e. literacy, science, social studies, etc. etc. There are many reasons this is important to me. Below are five of them.

Five Reasons Innovative Educators Should Participate in Social Networks

1-Connecting to Digital Natives: Will Richardson is right. We need to be deeply knowledgeable about the power of tools such as these that our students are using without us. If we know and can talk from experience about how we use social networks responsibly and effectively we gain credibility with our students.

2-Modeling for Digital Natives: As a social network participant innovative educators can share their site and refer to how it affects their learning often with students. This enables students to know that they do have something in common with their teachers and see smart ways their teachers are using their networks.

3-Interacting with Digital Natives: One of my favorite quotes is we need to replicate in the classroom the world in which our students are living. After getting some experience innovative educators can create social networks for their students to participate in and can then actually “teach” social networks and help students make connections between what they are doing in an educational social network and how these lessons can be transferred to their personal social network interactions.

4-Developing Your Personal Learning Network: A social network is a great place to begin and develop your own personal learning network of colleagues with whom you can connect, share, and learn from anytime and anywhere.

5-Share Your Own Reason: How do you see social networking being used to enhance innovative educating? Share your ideas by commenting on this post.

Are you convinced? If so, please come on over and join my network. Membership free. Just click on The Innovative Educator Social Network. And if you have a network or have experience using social networking to educate innovatively please share by commenting on this post.

More information
* Join my social network.
* Create a Ning Network for your own class, group, project, or event
* Discover how to use Ning in Education
* Trial program details - free networks for educators (ad-free)
* Social Networks in Education - A listing of Social Networks in Education and Articles
* Embrace MySpace: Safe Uses of Social Networking Tools - An AP/Teacher's advice for using social networking with students.
*Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking,” is a report based on three surveys: an online survey of nearly 1,300 9- to 17-year-olds, an online survey of more than 1,000 parents, and telephone interviews with 250 school districts leaders who make decisions on Internet policy. The complete NSBA report, is available on NSBA’s Web site at http://www.nsba.org/site/view.asp?CID=63&DID=41340.
*Facebook and Education - A library media specialists peak into how their district is using Facebook.

CIS 339 Brings Professional Learning Communities Into The 21st Century

I'm always on the lookout for schools that are effectively putting smart teaching and learning 2.0 practices in place. CIS 339 is one of those schools that has become a pioneer in embedding 21^st Century tools into the way they do business to enhance education. 

To start, as leadership expert Michael Fullan says, you need to get the right people in the right seats on the bus. 

The school’s committed leader, Jason Levy did just that by hiring Dan Ackerman, a former technology coach, as his assistant principal. Because of his background, Dan was prepared to support this effort. He also put Christina Jenkins in place as a full-time technology coach who among other accomplishments put a strong online infrastructure in place in addition to providing ongoing coaching and PD support. Additionally he retained Patrick Wagner an ed tech consultant. He also purchased a 21st Century literacy and social studies curriculum from Teaching Matters that includes onsite support from staff developers to support the program. Finally, he worked to secure teachers that were enthusiastic about using 21^st Century tools in the classroom and excited to be teaching in a school where every teacher had a laptop, projector and internet access to support instruction. 

Mr. Levy didn't have a miracle budget either. He had the same support on hand as most other NYC schools. He just ensured that the resources and staff he secured and purchases he made had innovative educational abilities at the core.