The 21st Century is often regarded as the Era of Technology. Today, technology plays a very important role in our lives. Also, it is considered as a basis for economic growth. An institution that is deficient in technology can never grow in the current situation. This is because technology makes our work much easier and less time-consuming. The impact of technology can be seen in every possible field and education is not an exception. According to the U.S. Department of Education, “Technology… has the power to transform teaching by ushering in a new model of connected teaching. This model links teachers to their students and to professional content, resources, and systems to help them improve their own instruction and personalize learning.” Technology can assist teachers and accelerate students’ learning. The use of technology entails a responsibility; especially, the users of digital technology.
A digital footprint is a perpetual and indelible tattoo in the digital world, which represents in a certain way who we are. Every day our presence grows in social networks. According to Perrin (2015), “Nearly two-thirds of American adults (65%) use social networking sites” (p. 2). Every day we leave intentional and unintentional digital footprints. The intentional digital footprint is information that we consciously upload to a network, and the unintentional digital footprint is that one that someone else such a friend, a relative, or a political adversary upload some of our sensitive information to a network. Students must be educated to be good digital citizens, and they should ethically and deliberately cultivate a digital footprint. One way to start the screening of our digital fingerprint, it is to search our name in different search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. One should get rid of our old unused accounts, and delete information that we do not want other people to see from current profiles in our social media networks.
Technology can lighten the burden of our daily lives in different areas, but it can also have negative consequences if we do not make proper use of digital technology.
References
Perrin, A. (2015). Social networking usage: 2005-2015 65% of adults now use social networking sites – a nearly tenfold jump in the past decade. Pew research Center. PDF File. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2015/10/PI_2015-10-08_Social-Networking-Usage-2005-2015_FINAL.pdf
U.S. Department of Education (n.d.). Use of technology in teaching and learning. Retrieved from https://www.ed.gov/oii-news/use-technology-teaching-and-learning
