Foot loose, fancy free or crippling foot binding?

What is a digital footprint? (Or finger print, as Rob Rubis proposes as a more appropriate name.)

I have to confess that I had no idea what was meant by a digital footprint a week ago. Therefore, before I can have an opinion of this issue within education, I need to build my own understanding.

There are many available definitions out there including Wikipedia (which in December 2007 had no entry): "Digital Footprints are traces left by someone's activity in a digital environment." The ikeepsafe, an organization that helps families create safe online experiences, puts it in kid-friendly terms: Simply put, a digital footprint is the amount of content, whether it be words, photographs, audio, or video, that is traceable to a given individual. The PEW report then distinguishes between a passive and active digital footprint:

PASSIVE: Personal data made accessible online with no deliberate intervention from an individual.
ACTIVE: Personal data made accessible online through deliberate posting or sharing of information by the user.

So, in launching a discussion about digital footprints with kids, it may be beneficial to show a real basic video such as this one, From before birth to after death, or What's your digital footprint by Debbie Wiel to build some common understanding:

What's Your Digital Footprint?

View more presentations from Debbie Weil.

So what is my imprint?

According to the Pew Report, 47% of online users (published in Dec, 2007) have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago. More than just googling yourself or RSS feeding a tag, it might be an interesting reflection for kids to think about how their digital habits correlate to how much of a footprint they'll have. Similar to the carbon footprint calculators, there are now possibilities for you to reflect on your daily life and the resulting digital imprint. Here are two:
1. From EMC
2. From Discovery


So who cares?

As the PEW report states, "most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit that information. Fully 60% of internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available about them online. Similarly, the majority of online adults (61%) do not feel compelled to limit the amount of information that can be found about them online."

However, there are now enough stories out there justifying all of us caring about monitoring and maintaining a positive digital footprint. As professionals, we need to realize that a growing percentage of employers are checking:

A recent CareerBuilder study found that 26% of all hiring managers use search engines to research the digital footprint of potential applicants and a staggering 50% of recruiters for college graduate jobs exhibited the same behavior. 63% of hiring managers admitted that what they found about applicants on social networks, to use one media type, caused them to not make an offer to applicants.

For those working with HS students, " A recent study by the University of Massachusetts' Center for Market Research found that 26% of college admission offices use search engines to research applicants and 21% search for information about applicants on social networks."

So, what can we do?

I agree with Susi that this all feels a bit “big brotherish” but it also offers opportunities and is the future of our own “professional marketing”

"Put Your Best Digital Footprint Forward: Career Expert Offers Seven Tips for Managing" is a straightforward guide to being proactive for us adults.

For some, you may want to try and "erase" some of your footprint, but this is no easy feat. The BBC in an article entitled "Spread of our digital footprint" asserts that “Wiping your digital footprint completely off the web may be an extreme and expensive measure. It is certainly much better to be careful of what info you let out in the first place”

For kids, awareness is the first step--what is my digital footprint and why do I need to be thinking about this. From there, we need to give students age-appropriate skills to be proactive in monitoring their footprint.

Still wondering

1. Developmentally, adolescents need to play with and try out new identities, take risks, and be able to "grow up" without having to pay a debt later. What implications are there with their current social networking explorations and the permanent prints left?

2. Does anyone really know to what extent our information is being used and/or abused? What is the line between being part of a wonderfully connected world and avoiding the "Hoover" types who want to take advantage? (Imagine what J. Edgar would do in today's world--scary!)

3. How do we learn from the marketing departments who are positively tapping into digital foot printing to help us all become savvier in this area?