Introduction

I am an Associate Dean at one school and a student at another. Mind you, I truly believe that we, all people, are always both students and teachers through life. We are learning machines that can not help but to grow and build new concepts and ideas from our daily interactions. As well, we are constantly sharing and thus contributing to the building of new ideas and concepts in others we interact with at the same time. Some of these are intentional but others are totally innocent and we don't even know we have done it. As a grandfather it is as heart warming now as it was with my children when I see a child I have interacted with do something in life, not because they were told but because they had seen me do it. Of course these actions are always acts of kindness or consideration for our fellow man. These are the actions we like to think are the only ones they saw that are emulate, but this to is not always the case.

During this course and over the next several weeks I am hoping that I will become an expert on all things digital around education. I intend to over come my fears of technology and start using it as the powerful tool it is instead of a system to get and send endless messages by e-mail. As an educator I want to connect with more people and enter into a learning partnership using all the great and wonder full tools available. I know that I am not aware of how to act or interact in the digital community and wish to establish good habits and etiquette before venturing out and using different methods of digital interactions with students.  I want to make sure that the student will not only learn form me the information or context of the interaction but how to be good digital citizens as well.

It is also important for me to try and build and maintain a good digital footprint. This part of the program will be so important. By creating a good digital footprint and then expressing or sharing information that is worth while or insight full, one could easily leave their mark on the world from a simple blog post. Of course in the sea of information that the internet has now created it is very possible that you just become a small drop in the ocean. As the world shrinks through technology it will be expected that anyone will be able to search you on the net and find out more about you. In fact I suspect that when you have no digital footprint in the future this will be as bad as having a bad one. Perspective employers will wonder what you are hiding for example if they can not find you digitally. Having a good footprint that is easy to find will be a professional requirement for our graduates.

I am looking forward to the journey.

Jeff