Category: curating digital footprints

Posted in calculating digital footprints, curating digital footprints, digital footprints, digital habits, parents and technology

You can Explore, Calculate & Curate Your Digital Footprints

Posted on by Marti Weston
Screen Shot 2019-06-25 at 9.42.12 PM
Check out this digital footprint site.

Once in a while something appears on my screen that is more than a couple of years old, in this care from 2011, but it’s still current and timely eight years later.

This Digital Footprint information and Exploration Site was created by two graduate students, Sarah Bean and Abbi Brenoel, in The Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

Their website helps users examine their digital footprint profile from a variety of vantage points. Moreover, individuals who use the site can learn just how easy it is to participate in normal, everyday digital activities that multiply, many times over, those digital footprints. Continue reading “You can Explore, Calculate & Curate Your Digital Footprints” →

Posted in 21st Century parenting, curating digital footprints, digital footprints, digital kids, parents and technology

Resolution 2015: Focus on Family Members’ Digital Footprints

Posted on by Marti Weston
Digital Footprint Venn Diagram Project
Student Digital Footprint Venn Diagram Project

Digital footprints — those small bits of digital information collected and compiled on each individual — can portray a person in all sorts of ways. Everything we do on the web or with when we interact with other connected sites is saved somewhere. We may think first of email, texts, social media, and web searches, but our information gets collected when we shop, travel, drive, make mobile phone calls, and even when we buy groceries.

Below are a few links that can help parents and educators think about managing and curating digital footprints. Everyone, child and adult, has a digital footprint profile.

Posted in 21st Century parenting, curating digital footprints, digital footprints, digital kids, parents and technology

Calculate Your Digital Footprints: Then Curate Them

Posted on by Marti Weston

I’ve written before about the need for all of us — 21st Century kids and parents — to understand just how many digital footprints we create during a single day — from email and texts to social media entries to credit card purchases to travel to smartphones and smart cards of all sorts, and much more. Each year, when my fifth graders keep a family diary on paper, just for a day, they watch in amazement as the digital footprints add up.

It’s fun to use an old-fashioned paper diary, but a few other online resources are available to help individuals and families learn more and get a sense of just how fast our digital footprints accumulate. Check them out, and you, too, will be amazed.

EMC offers a digital footprint estimate and offers a calculator to keep counting.
EMC offers a digital footprint estimate and offers a calculator to keep counting.

— EMC, a company that builds network infrastructures for businesses, offers a digital footprint calculator, downloadable for Mac or PC. The calculator is a mini-program. After it’s installed it asks a user a series of questions — the answers are not saved — and then it begins to speedily calculate that person’s footprints. Once an individual fills in all of the blanks, the program calculates how many megabytes of digital footprints accumulate, and it offers a small calculator that keeps track over a period of time. You can watch the number increase moment-by-moment.

Continue reading “Calculate Your Digital Footprints: Then Curate Them” →