Challenge 6: Component 2:1 -The End Of The Road

So ladies and gentlemen, we’re at the end of our blog posting for our class and we are reflecting on our first voice thread. In our first voice thread we were asked what we thought about digital citizenship, and my response was that I believed it was a gateway of opportunities, a whole new world for this upcoming generation to explore. In my eyes this came along with pros and cons. Being able to keep in touch with family while being in different parts of the city, state, country, even the world was the biggest advantage to my belief at the time. How awesome is it to be able to log onto an app and be able to see pictures of a newborn family member miles away that you weren’t able to just drive down the street to see? So I’m sure many people agree with that aspect keeping in contact with family members. The biggest disadvantage I found was that so many people are getting caught up in a digital world because all of these people are being sucked into their phones and social media sites that they were missing out on so many things that this beautiful world we have has to offer. How many of you can think of a time when a person has been so engaged on their phone that they ran into a pole?   Think about it this way, what if in a split second the most beautiful sunset occurs and you aren’t able to catch it because you were looking through Instagram or Facebook, now I’m sure that happens way to often in our society. After taking this class my eyes have been opened to so many aspects that I never thought of before. Thinking about digital citizenship now as opposed to then, I can say that I view digital citizenship in a completely different way. Digital citizenship to me has become a way to promote oneself via social media and generally on the Internet. I kind of think about it like this; it is a reputation and representation of yourself, kind of like a resume, and things such as those should be taken care of. A person always wants their best qualities to shine when it really comes down to it and using ones digital citizenship wisely that person can do so very efficiently. There are so many aspects that come into play about how your digital citizenship can be affected but I think the biggest one that stuck out to me when learning about digital citizenship was participatory culture. The easiest way for me to put this, is that things you do online will always find a way to catch up to you, so think twice about how you would liked to be viewed without being able to explain anything. Only post things you would be proud to have your name come up with, such as organizations you have been involved with or volunteer work you have done. Keep the private things private and make the public ones things that you are proud of.