Creating waves of change, Day #6--building positive digital footprints

In addition to blogging and building a resume with your online presence, it is also important to push forward change--to be part of something greater--as you develop your digital footprints. Unlike the generations before, you have the power to touch a much larger audience with your digital legacy. So, why not use that audience to your advantage? In this sense, a digital footprint is very unique--anyone can view it. Before, the audience you reached on a day-to-day basis was rather consistent and, perhaps, limited. Now, however, the audience can change drastically.

With online collaboration projects, teachers and students can create a positive mark in their online presence. For instance, if students collaborate with a school in Ethiopia to improve women's rights, that project becomes permanent on the student's record or resume. Just as the more positive, influential roles and jobs you undertake can improve your resume, so too can the collaborative projects students engage in.

Some great collaborative projects include:

• This site provides a great listing:  http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/Global_Collaborative_Projects.htm
• iEARN Collaboration projects (facilitated by teachers and students, schools can join existing projects or initiate their own projects of change):  http://media.iearn.org/projects
• Grandmother and me (a project that stretches across ethnicities and languages and shares the grandmothers of the world):  http://www.kidlink.org/drupal/project/grandmother/?q=KIDPROJ/grandmother/
• ePals (a global community for teachers and students):  http://www.epals.com/
• The U.S. Department of Education's guide to Internet Collaboration:  http://www2.ed.gov/teachers/how/tech/international/index.html
• WhaleNet (a place to collaborate with others in the natural world):  http://whale.wheelock.edu/Welcome.html
• Global SchoolNet (hosts many great collaborative projects):  http://www.globalschoolnet.org/
• The JASON project (connects education through science in a global environment):  http://www.jason.org/public/whatis/start.aspx
• My Hero Project:  http://myhero.com/go/home.asp

All projects allow students to not only participate and create change in a global community, but add a positive legacy to their names. Check out the first link for a listing of many more projects to engage your class in. All projects will help build a positive digital legacy for you and your students and improve digital citizenship.