Tech task # 1. Digital Identity / Foot print

 While I am googling myself, a proverbs  of my people, the Oromo, popped up in mind which says "Gowwaa fi waraqaan waan qabe gadi hin lakkisu"  literally means a fool person and paper keep what you gave them or put on them forever.  When I put my name in google search engine, I found some of things I have never expected were there, that  reminds me of the above proverbs. Even ifI am not an active member of the digital world except for limited communication platforms such as Email, Facebook and Twitter, Google is telling me that I have a youtube account in my name, which I think is somebody else. The  Funny thing is just an account, no video in it.  If we put anything bad or good on the social media platform or online platform google has a mighty power to find and expose it. Hence, when thinking of posting something on a social media platform, we should make sure that the thing we are posting, even our personal pictures are  appropriate to the public or not in relation to professional ethics, workplace policy as well cultural values of the society we are living in.  In this regard , educators have dual responsibilities, guiding our students and being a role model to them in our digital identity.  What is appropriate to post? who should we interact with and follow? are some of the questions we should answer since it tells who we are. Because the digital footprint tells the audience who we are, since it is something we leave behind as we use the internet. Comments on social media, Skype calls,  apps use and email records are part of our online history and can potentially be seen by other people. 

The other thing we should do before using any social media platforms is to understand it is privacy policy, whether it allows us to control our posts. Some services, including Facebook, allow us  to control the audience for each post. Others, including Twitter, have universal settings that control all of your posts. As the twenty-first century digital world heavily relies  upon our data, it is increasingly important to protect and own our digital identity, arguably one of our most valuable assets.

There are ways you can limit who sees what you post but, if you are really worried about something getting into the wrong hands, the safest way to avoid that is to not post it on social media. For that matter, you might also avoid sending it via email or text since anything that’s digital can be copied and pasted deliberately or by accident. But these are extreme cases, such as material that would be embarrassing or get you or others into trouble. Generally it is important to care about our digital foot print. 

Why we should care about managing our digital footprint? the following video has an answer.