How well connected are you? No I don’t mean if you are related to royalty or the president of your country.

I mean are you a connected person?

Twenty three years ago when I did my first trip around the world, I was not very well connected at all. To communicate with my parents I needed to write a postcard or mail a letter. Often I would get home before that letter arrived in the mail. Or I could phone them from a local phone using a phone card that I had prepaid. But I needed to know what time it was in Australia so I didn’t wake them up at 3am for my phone call.

But on my last trip to America, I could communicate immediately via Facebook or email. They could see my photos as soon as I had loaded them onto Flickr. They could read about what I had been doing by visiting my blog. My connected teacher friends could read my tweets.

New technology has changed the way we connect with each other in our small world.

October has been Connected Educator Month around the world (but particularly America) There have been lots of activities for teachers and other interested educators to take part in from online bookclubs, competitions, podcasting, blogging, pinterest etc. But often these special events are only known to those educators who are already connecting often.

Activity 1. Survey or poll the teachers at your school  to find out how they are connected. Did they know about Connected Educator Month? How do they connect with other teachers in their state? How do they connect overseas? How do they connect with family? What do they use to connect? Write a post about your results telling us some statistics about connectedness at your school.

Activity 2. Create a mindmap showing how you connect as a student. Include the tools you use to connect as well as who you connect to. Think carefully about all the ways you connect to different members of your family.

Activity 3. Here is an example of a connected teacher. Do you think this is similar for a connected student? Explain the differences and similarities. Click on the image to get a larger version.

 

Being connected with all this technology means everyone is leaving a digital footprint.

Activity 4. Watch the two videos below then leave a comment on this post about something that you found very interesting in one of the videos. Write a post explaining the differences between the videos. Which did you prefer and why?

Activity 5. After watching the two videos, write a post about your digital footprint. Is it positive or negative? Would you be proud to have your grandparents or your future grandchildren look at everything you have included in your digital footprint? Why or why not? Maybe Google your name to see what is online about you, that you might not have put there.

Activity 6. Imagine your are debating this topic: It is better to have a negative digital footprint than no footprint at all. Give three reasons to support each side of the debate.

Activity 7. Here are some websites to visit related to cybersafety and digital footprints. Visit some of them and write a post, create a poster or glogster, create a cartoon about what you found out. Your teacher might also give you other websites to visit.

  • ACMA Australia – cybersafety for young kids, kids and teens.
  • Google has some digcitizenship adventures relating to digital footprints – more for middle and high school students
  • Kidsmart from the UK has some great tips and information

Activity 8. Mainly middle and high school students – There are 9 elements to being a good digital citizen. Read this post then write your own post about what you consider are the most important parts of the nine elements. Are there certain areas you need to improve on? Why?

Activity 9. There are both advantages and disadvantages to being able to connect and communicate more easily. Write a post or run a debate on this topic. Maybe create a comic strip showing each side.

Security

Teachers

Here are some links to  sites relating to digital footprints and internet safety

Still time left

Visit other student and class blogs, read our flip magazines, add links to your blogroll of blogs you visit often. Try to categorize these eg class blogs, overseas students, my friends etc.

 

Image source from flickr

10 thoughts on “Week 7 – Connections

  1. I found the first video very interesting because it tells you all about your digital footprint and how people can fin out the websites you have been on.

  2. I think these videos are very informative. I am glad I was born before my parents had Facebook because I wouldn’t want to have such a big digital footprint. If I have children I will respect there privacy no matter what age they are. Also I will tell them everything leaves a mark because reputations can be destroyed by other people by using the internet. At my school we had a speaker who told us about how easy it is to hack on to some ones Facebook. It is scary what can happen when you aren’t careful!

  3. Hello, I think all the information in both of these videos are very important, I wonder how large my digital dossier is? I never even knew about it. I’m glad you posted these videos, they helped me a lot and now i’ll be even more careful when surfing the web.

  4. I thought that the videos were very interesting!
    I did not even know most of that stuff.
    This is really going to make me really think twice about things on the internet!

  5. Hi Miss W I found many things that were very interesting, I didn’t even know that there was such thing as a digital dossier. All the information was very important.

  6. Hi Miss W one thing that I found very interesting was that you have a digital dossier before you are born.

  7. Hi Miss W!
    This is very dangerous (cyber surfing). I really think we all should be considerate of what we do online even offline, and what we post. It can be tracked easily, even this comment I am doing right now is being tracked by Google. Cyber hackers can use this stuff against us, everyone needs to look out.
    From babablacksheep

  8. HI Miss W
    I think this stuff about cyber safety is really important and the digital foot print is really important. I will have to be more careful.
    Thank you for putting this info up.
    From Ali

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