Helping High School Students Build Digital Literacy

As soon as parents post a photo with their child’s birth announcement, a digital footprint begins. As kids grow up and expand their digital footprints, they have to learn that not everything they post or others post about them online is positive. That’s tough to understand for a teenager whose frontal lobe isn’t developed just yet.

Helping students understand their digital footprint and why it’s important to protect it is a great starting place in ebbing the flow of negative or unwanted information online. It’s a part of our job as teachers to educate students on how this footprint might impact them in the future for jobs, scholarships, college acceptances, etc.

The goal is to help students see their own digital footprint, understand there are positive, neutral and negative implications, and how they can improve their online reputation to benefit them, instead of harm them.

Students will roll their eyes, thinking they know more about technology than we do as teachers, but honestly, they might not know this stuff and by the end, they might just think that we know more than they thought.

So here’s the plan:

1. Present the step-by-step lesson constructed to evaluate what kind of digital footprint they have - positive, neutral or negative, and then educate them on what it all means and how to improve it.
1. Step 1: Introduction to the topic + what is your digital footprint
1. Cover vocabulary
2. Google search name
3. Collect data from class
4. Footprint activity (worksheet included)
2. Step 2: Benefits and implications of your digital footprint
1. Benefits
2. Risks and implications
3. How to improve your digital footprint
3. Step 3: Project - Evaluation and improvement of your digital footprint
1. Evaluative essay task

This is a starting place on the topic, and the goal is to have students begin to understand their impact on their own futures based on what is out there online about them now. How to be cognizant about what they post or make public in the future is important and how it can affect their future for better or for worse

Jennifer Epping is an ELA and journalism teacher of 14 years who lives in Des Moines, Iowa. She has bachelor’s degrees in journalism and mass communication and English Education from Iowa State University, and a professional certificate in book and magazine publishing from New York University. She spent some time in book publishing in New York and found her passion in the classroom helping students find their voices. She loves spending time with her wife, Amanda, and their one-year-old son, Elliott, while also diving into as many books as possible.