The footprints I've left

After recently googling my name, I've found I'm leaving a pretty clean digital footprint. I was surprised to find the first thing that appears is my Pinterest images of cakes I've made. And having attended much professional technology development this summer, my Pinterest finds are followed by Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. My school system background is easy to pick out as well as I appear in board meeting minutes from when I requested a leave of absence to get my teaching credentials and more recently from when my husband won a contest sponsored by Rush Limbaugh which resulted in a $15,000 donation to our school!

As an educator a good way to leave a positive footprint, first and foremost, is to watch what you post on personal social media. Then, to develop your professional footprint, you may want to join sites that are of interest to your profession. For instance, GoodReads comes up when you google my name--and that's good because I'm a librarian.

I think the best way to ensure that our students leave a good digital footprint is to share the experiences of those who didn't and the consequences that came about. Additionally, within our school systems, there should be a plan for implementing digital citizenship lessons via home room teachers, a librarian, a language arts class, or a technology class or something. We should never assume someone else has already addressed it.

Curating Resources

Susie spent hours collecting and curating resources for her upcoming unit on cells. She is able to successfully use much of what she has found when implementing her plans.


The following year, when it is time to begin the unit on cells again, Susie forgets about the resources she curated. She essentially starts from scratch, performing the task of searching, saving, and sorting once again.


Create a plan or provide suggestions for ways to make your curated resources a regular part of your planning.


When reading the above scenario, my first thought was "Shame on Susie for not keeping her lesson plans" which I assume would have had her curated resources. My second thought was Susie was perhaps a first year teacher and therefore forgot, or didn't know, to save her plans. My third thought was that, like many teachers, Susie got shifted from one grade level or subject to a different one, but it appears she is still teaching the unit on cells again, so scratch that third thought!

But, alas, the problem remains that Susie has probably learned her lesson and is likely quite frustrated each time she sits down to plan. Therefore, she needs a long-term plan that considers what to curate and where to curate it.

First: If she doesn't already have one she needs to invest in a large capacity flash drive and save all her plans on it. BETTER STILL--she needs to learn about Cloud storage and utilize something like iCloud or SkyDrive. By utilizing Cloud storage, she won't have to worry about disappearing or laundered flash drives!

Second: She needs to think about how she wants to curate resources. Does she want a central spot for ALL her resources? Does she want to curate resources in each lesson plan? Does she want to curate sources for each unit? These are all things to consider as each person has unique preferences. 

There are numerous ways to store resources whether it be on hardware like a flash drive or external drive or online in any numerous ways of Cloud storage. After familiarizing herself with her options she should pick one and stick with it. Nothing is more frustrating than having too many different storage spots and forgetting what is stored where!

 Although there are many great options, my recommendation would be to store websites and links on Symbaloo or delicious.com by bookmarking them and to store other resources like worksheets, notes, screenshots, etc. on OneNote--my personal favorite so far.

Regardless of her personal preferences, there are too many great options available to have an excuse for not curating the sources she worked so diligently to obtain in the first place!