10 Things Students Should Know About Their Digital Footprints
This was me the whole time I was reading this article:
Here are just two from the list:
1. College admissions and employers do read your online profiles and they do make decisions based upon information they find out about you online. In fact, colleges will make decisions based upon many forms of questionable involvement. Scott Cornwell, College and Career Adviser at Ladue Horton Watkins High School in St. Louis, Missouri said, “I had a case where a parent sent an email to a college suggesting they look at the Facebook page of a student who was applying to the same school as her daughter. The Facebook page showed the other student at a party with alcohol. The mother’s goal was to get rid of some of the competition her daughter would have at this selective school. In the end, both the student at the party and the daughter of the mother were rejected (the first in part because of the Facebook page, the second because the college was concerned about dealing with such a manipulative mother for four years).”
2. As illustrated in the example above, educators and parents do see, read, and hear about your online escapades, even though you go to great lengths to hide them from us. There have been many times I wish I hadn’t stumbled upon a student Twitter or Facebook post, but I have. These experiences, which included foul language, cyberbullying, and basic immaturity, have only reinforced to me that digital citizenship needs to be taught in our schools as early as possible.
