This post is worth reading from Pete Reilly’s Ed Tech Journeys blog. It may help answer my questions about what it is that we’re trying to teach students about their online behaviour. Using Pete’s definition, “integrity” might be at or near the heart of it.
Pete lays out a solid definition of integrity:
“My definition of integrity is ‘acting in alignment with my beliefs and values’.”
And he summarises the motivation for striving for integrity:
“The more often our values and beliefs align with our actions, the more we feel the power of integrity. It is from here that we live a life that is ‘centered’ and ‘grounded’. It is from here that we can effectively lead others. It is from here that we can say…
…I am living life on purpose.”
Read the rest of his blog post for his reasoning that leads up to that last quote.
I’ve been writing and speaking about “digital footprints” and making the claim that it’s important to train kids to take their real “selves” online. I don’t believe that leading lives of multiple, conflicting personalities online is healthy for young people while they are still developing their own real-world personality.
I know that others will disagree with this view saying that it can be healthy to try out a fantasy life, and that online experiments with your personality are safer. However, I believe that the online world is becoming to real for it to be a place without real-world implications. Our online personalities will become more and more a part of our real-life personalities that it will be difficult to proclaim “integrity” if our two worlds (really more now, one world) don’t both align with our values.
A lot of growing up is about choices. Those choices are based on the purposes for which we choose to live.
