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.

“While the business world calls it ‘personal branding’ the term ‘digital citizenship’ or ‘digital footprint’ is the synomous term in education. The idea of students developing their ‘brand’ or identity is a burgeoning concept in education.”

The reference here, and in most of the writings I’m finding currently, are to digital footprints in a secular sense.  I think there’s great opportunities in Lutheran schools for making the connection between branding and baptism.  That’s a key difference between the worldview and the Christian view.  The world says, “Develop your brand.  Make yourself stand out.  Be yourself.”  The Gospel says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:23-25

In Baptism our old, sinful self is drowned and dies with Christ in order to rise with him to a new life lived in service to Him and for His glory – rather than for the self and personal glory.  That calls for a dramatically different type of “branding” to teach students from what the world teaches.

The resources include information for parents regarding Internet Safety and resources for teachers regarding teaching digital citizenship.

In short, I’ve been talking about how critical it is for schools to understand how the Web 2.0 has changed the online world – and how classrooms must respond.  Kids are engaging the world, publishing, socialising, purchasing, gaming, etc. – their lives are more and more being lived online.  Who’s going to walk with them to learn how to navigate the good and the bad of this new world?  Educators can’t leave it to the parents… and parents can’t leave responsibility to educators.  Both need to work together to teach “digital citizenship.”

Will Richardson wrote, “If you want kids to be educated about these tools and environments, then maybe we should, um, educate them.”

I had billed the evening as a “conversation starter”.  The intent of the event was to lay a foundation for understanding our kids who are growing up in a world vastly different from previous generations, and to generate conversation about how the college community can work together to prepare our kids for their digital future.

Rather than posting my PowerPoint, which won’t tell you that much by itself since I practice minimalism when it comes to PowerPoints, I’ve posted the notes I used myself.  Even these are a bit sketchy as I was not desiring to “lecture” but to faciliate discussion.  Here’s a link to my presenter’s notes.

Written for for Lutheran Education Australia’s magazine “SchooLink”

I recently learned that my “digital footprint” since the first of the year was estimated to be approaching 180 gigabytes, or at least, that’s according to a five-minute survey I completed regarding my digital communication habits.

This bit of information raised an eyebrow along with a number of questions.  To begin with, what do 180 gigabytes look like?  A quick Google search informed me that 100 gigabytes would be equivalent to the amount of information on a “library floor of academic journals on shelves.”  Now, I acknowledge that I’m an active user of new technology.  But if a middle-aged family man and teacher at a Lutheran college has a footprint that large, I have to wander about how incredibly large the footprints must be for my seemingly 100% digitally immersed students.

Digital Footprints
What does my digital footprint look like? It’s a data trail comprised of things by me and about me that are digitally and often publicly accessible.  My footprint is a composite of my social networking profiles, my web sites and blogs, photos I’ve shared online, transcripts of my online text chats, videos uploaded, the heaps of emails I exchange, the information I divulge when registering on various web sites, and the data Google collects regarding my searching habits.  From the body of my professional work, it includes the resources I create and the records I keep, nearly all of which are now in digital form.  In addition to data I actively create and purposely publish, my footprint includes information about me posted by others as well as personal details that are part of the public record (sometimes referred to as a “digital shadow”).  Yes, that’s now approaching two floors of a library of information about me visible to the world just from the current year.

Imagine how many virtual library floors my students are filling with their social networking, interactive gaming, online shopping, and Google searches with which the school day interferes.

In a New York Times article in 2006, John Battelle commented, “We are living online, but have yet to fully realize the implications of doing so… One of those implications is that our tracks through the digital sand are eternal.”1

Eternity is a long time to have library floors of information about our selves exposed to the world.

Communication in Web 2.0
The ability to leave massive digital footprints is due to more recent innovations in the way the Internet is used today.  Our early activities on the web largely consisted of accessing information posted online by universities, governments, and large corporations.  The stuff we downloaded to our computers was a representation of those other entities.  Although what we chose to download did communicate something about our selves, this self-portrait wasn’t exposed for the world to see outside of the emails we sent off.

However, the web as we once knew it has been transformed into Web 2.0 offering us a rich set of tools that makes the digital highway truly a two-way street.  I (and my students outside of school hours) am leaving massive digital footprints because we’re able to interact with a flattening world, 24/7 with relative ease.   We make friends in Facebook.  We post photos and videos to web sites such as Flickr and YouTube.  We broadcast our opinions on our blogs for the world to read, and add to news stories on mainstream media web sites by leaving our personal comments.  We don’t just read information, but we author it in Wikipedia.  Our music downloads and other online purchases are being tracked in order to shape and personalise our future shopping experiences.

Multiple, Parallel Realities
In recognising the communication trends of Web 2.0, I’ve become self-conscious of what my digital footprints communicate about me, and concerned about what my students’ footprints communicate about them?  What should our digital footprints say about us, anyway?  Do our online identities need to reflect our offline convictions?  Is it acceptable to be anything other than faithful to my Christian identity when I go online?  How real has my virtual world become?

The truth we’re now acknowledging is that to this generation of young people, the virtual world is more and more becoming their reality.   Our students are navigating a frightening new world in which postmodernism teaches them that they can construct their own reality (their own truths and values).  If that’s not enough reason to be weary, Web 2.0 gives them the tools to create multiple, parallel realities for themselves.

Christ’s and christs
Web 2.0 is where many of our students are already residing, and where their future life and work, and even possibly their spirituality, will exist across an ever-expansive gray area between the online and offline worlds.  Lutheran schools are uniquely capable of preparing students to take footsteps into the digital world that leave a witness to a faith in the only reality that matters – that our eternity rests in Christ alone.

Malcolm Bartsch wrote, “Lutheran schools attempt to demonstrate what living in community in relationship with Jesus Christ means.”2 The current challenge for Lutheran education is to grasp the opportunities offered by technology to teach what living in online communities in relationship with Jesus Christ means to the digital generations.

Weaving a Tapestry
So, what if we as Lutheran educators viewed our digital footprints and those of our students as threads being woven into a digital tapestry that gives a unified witness to the Gospel?  And what if we accepted that for our kids today, the virtual world is as much reality as anything else to them?  And what if within the walls of our Lutheran campuses we didn’t just acknowledge the online identities of our students, but worked to influence and shape and nurture those online identities?  What if we offered them opportunities to live out the 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 definition of love in the online world – and modelled it for them online?  What if we taught them the reality that they remain “a chosen race, a royal priesthood” as described in 1 Peter 2:9-12 whether online or offline?  What if we opened up the world of Web 2.0 for our students to show the world who they are, rather than banning and blocking it on our campuses and having no impact on their off-campus online worlds?

The world is their stage now.  We’ve developed for them the communication tools to give a global witness like no generation before.  Let’s make footprints with our students.

NOTES
1. Battelle, John, quoted by Tom Zeller Jr. in “Lest We Regret Our Digital Bread Crumbs” New York Times, June 12, 2006 (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/technology/12link.html)

2. Bartsch, Malcolm, Why a Lutheran School? Education and Theology in Dialogue (Lutheran Church of Australia Board for Lutheran Schools, 2001), 81.

The Kingdom of God: The Biblical Concept and Its Meaning for the Church
John Bright
Abingdon Press Nashville 1988

A Teacher of the Church
Edited by Russ Moulds
Wipf and Stock Publishers
Eugene OR  2007

Why a Lutheran School? Education and Theology in Dialogue
Malcolm I. Bartsch
Lutheran Church of Australia Board for Lutheran Schools
North Adelaide
2001

The link above is to a list of resources related to my presentation to the Parents & Friends Association at Living Waters Lutheran College – Rockingham, Western Australia.

Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/229/report_display.asp
Report from the PEW Internet & American Life Project

Riding the Waves of “Web 2.0″
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/189/report_display.asp
Report from the PEW Internet & American Life Project

“Not ‘Natives’ & ‘Immigrants’ but ‘Visitors’ & ‘Residents’” by David White
http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2008/07/23/not-natives-immigrants-but-visitors-residents/

The Norton Online Living Report – Australia
http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/home_homeoffice/media/pdf/nolr/080214_aus_norton_online_living_report_nolr-final.pdf

Digiteen Wiki
http://digiteen.wikispaces.com/
Web site about digital citizenship in education lists the 9 elements of digital citizenship from the book Digital Citizenship in Schools by Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey published by ISTE 2007

The Two ‘Kingdoms’ from the Lutheran Church of Australia: Commission on Social and Bioethical Questions
http://www.lca.org.au/resources/csbq/twokingdoms.pdf

Wordle – create word clouds
http://wordle.net

Moodle.org – learning management system
http://moodle.org

Everything you need to know about Web 2.0
http://www.techsoup.org/toolkits/web2/

Wesley Fryer’s wikis on social networking

• Safe Digital Social Networking (DSN) -or- Proactive Approaches to Address Cyberbullying and Digital Social Networking
  http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/safedsn
• Internet Safety and Social Networking for Parents

  http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com/internetsafety

Personal Digital Footprint  Calculator (Mac or PC)
http://www.emc.com/digital_universe

Imbee – free social network for kids with teacher managed classroom signup
http://imbee.com

Web 2.0 tag cloud  by Markus Angermeier
http://kosmar.de/archives/2005/11/11/the-huge-cloud-lens-bubble-map-web20/

Michael Wesch’s Digital Ethnography videos

• A Vision of Students Today
  http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
• The Machine is Us/ing Us
  http://mediatedcultures.net/mediatedculture.htm

Growing Up Online video
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/teach/kidsonline/