Lesson 4: Digital Footprint

Prompt: Think of 2-3 websites you have accounts on. What kind of information could someone learn about you by looking on these websites?

Have students silently brainstorm or journal, then share with a partner, and finally share as a full class.

Discussion Goal: This discussion is not about coming up with a comprehensive list of personal information students may have shared with websites, nor is it to frighten them out of sharing information. The goal is for students to start thinking more critically about when and where they share information about themselves. Based on their responses, create a list of all of the websites that may have their personal information.

Extending the Discussion: If students are having trouble thinking of information, you may want to follow up with some more specific prompts:

• What information do you know you've given to a website (eg. your email address)
• What information might you have unknowingly given to a website (eg. a picture with your home address)
• What information might other people have shared about you without your knowledge or permission (eg. tagging you on Facebook)

There's a lot of information that we put on the internet, whether we mean to do it or not. As we learn more about creating our own websites and start developing our own personal projects, you may find yourself wanting to include some of your own personal information. That’s why today we’re going to pause on making websites and instead focus on how we may want to share personal information online and making sure our digital footprint doesn’t contain information that could put us in danger or make us unsafe.

Key Vocabulary:

• Digital Footprint - The collected information about an individual across multiple websites on the Internet.

Question of the Day: How can you make sure that your private information stays private?

Group: Decide if you would like to have students complete this activity individually or in groups of 2-3

Distribute: Give each student a copy of the Social Sleuth activity guide

Display: Show students the overview of the activity guide. Have students read the Sleuthing Online section out loud to get an overview of the activity they are about to complete.

Transition: Send students to Code Studio.

Do This: Have students look through all of the provided social media pages on Code Studio. The pages represent three unique individuals, each of whom has an account on three social media platforms. Then have students choose two users they want to investigate.

Short on Time? Students are asked to choose two users from the available profiles, but if you are short on time, you can ask students to complete just one of the footprints.

Do This: Have students explore the different social media pages and record the information they find in the table on their activity guide.

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Circulate: Students will attempt to figure out who the two users are and answer some detailed questions about them. The footprint questions are designed to push students towards combining details from multiple social platforms and understanding that together the profiles represent more detailed information than the users probably intend to reveal about themselves. Some questions may not be answerable for all users or may have different levels of details (full street address for one user, but only a city and state for another).

Make sure students have dedicated time before the end of class to answer the questions at the end of the activity guide, even if they don’t finish completely sleuthing on the social media websites.

Students are asked to choose two users from the available profiles, but if you are short on time, you can ask students to complete just one of the footprints.

Share Out: Invite students to share some of their answers to the last questions on the activity guide

• What was one piece of information about either of your users that they probably did not want to share? How was it accidentally shared?
• Which of the two users do you think was more successful in protecting their privacy? What made them successful?

Discussion Goal: Student answers will vary, and it’s okay to not have a class consensus. Instead, focus on the reasoning and justification students use when explaining their answers. These thoughts will segue into the wrap-up activity where students consider a “checklist” of what should or shouldn’t be shared online.

The activity today focused on how social media websites contribute to a digital footprint. As we prepare to publish our first web pages, you'll need to think about how those contribute to your digital footprint.

Prompt: With your elbow partner, come up with a checklist that you can use to determine what should, and shouldn't, be posted online.

Discussion Goal: Use this discussion to create a lasting checklist of best practices for when publishing information online. Possible checks include:

• Could someone identify me with this information?: for example name, address, phone number, etc.
• Do I want everyone to see this?: Don't publish anything you don't want to possibly be published to the world.
• Do I want this to be permanent?: You lose control of information once it's published and it could be around for your entire life.

Students' lists may be different but should cover these principles and additional ones they saw in today's lesson.

(Optional) Share: Allow groups to share out their checklists, using the responses to develop a class-wide web publishing checklist. Consider making a poster of your class-wide checklist that you can refer back to throughout the unit.

Question of the Day: How can you make sure that your private information stays private?