Digital Citizenship and Creating Websites!!

This week is all about digital citizenship and creating websites!

In the book LOLOMG! by Matt Ivester, the last two chapters, ten and eleven, are about digital citizenship and your reputation.

Chapter ten explains how you can impact the internet in numerous ways. For example, the book talks about campaigns started by college students to raise awareness of online behavior and how to prevent it. Now there is no rulebook on what is good or bad behavior but you have to judge yourself on what you would post. Chapter ten provides ten tests you can use to figure out if you are misbehaving.

1. The Golden Rule: Are you treating others the way you would want to be treated?

I know we have all heard this since we were kids but it is truly the golden rule in how you should interact with others, both online and offline.

2. The Golden Rule 2.0: This is just like the one above but goes a step further. Are you impacting that person's reputation, could it be considered cyberbullying, and how are they handling those "jokes" or playful teasing?

3. The Laws and Politics Test: Are you breaking any violations or rules of a website? Is it possibly illegal? Is it considered unethical?

I don't think anyone ever reads the Terms and Conditions when they sign up for things and that can end up biting you in the butt.

4. The Everybody Test: Is everybody doing it? Do your actions play into the cyberbullying of others?

5. The Offline Test: Would you be doing or saying these things in the real world?

6, The Real Name Test: Are you anonymously sending things or do you send them with your real name?

7. The Emotion Test: Are you doing these things out of emotional tendencies?

8. The Whole World Test: Would you be comfortable if everyone knew what you were doing?

9. The "Get It?" Test: Is what you are saying comprehensible? Will it be taken out of context or misunderstood?

AND FINALLY

10. Your Test: How does it represent you as a person? Does it reflect your personal values and morals?

Number ten is the most important test among all of them because if it isn't who you are or how you want to be known for then you shouldn't be doing it.


Chapter eleven reinforces chapter ten by talking about reputations. When people use their real names they often behave much better online because they don't want to ruin their reputation. If you run around on the internet insulting and bullying others it will come back to haunt you because those messages never truly go away like we have discussed in other blogs, everything is archived. So chapter ten and eleven are just reaffirming that we need to be careful and conscious online to be able to advance ourselves. This book has given me many good tips and I highly recommend reading it. It has made me think about everything I have ever posted and made me more conscious of what I will post.

Next up are this week's articles about creating websites!!!


The first one comes from Website Builder Expert and its all about WIX tutorials! I have messed around with WIX before and it's a super easy website building platform that is completely FREE! It can't get much better than that honestly. Now you can pay to have special features but if you are just looking to showcase something it's perfect for you. Now the tutorials on Website Builder Expert are super simple and start with the basics of how to sign up, how to pick a template, how to add images and everything else you can imagine. I highly suggest WIX for someone that needs direction and easy usage.

The second article is from Business Matters and it's "Know the tools you Are using: Which website builder is best for your needs?" This article explains all the platforms that you can use to create a website. It talks about WIX, Weebly, Squarespace, and Shopify. Now WIX and Weebly are the only ones that you can use completely for free, Squarespace and Shopify offer free trials but you have to pay later. So I highly suggest reading this article because it will help you pick which one is best for you. 

The last article is "How To Create A Website With Weebly" by Free Technology for Teachers. Now this article is obviously about Weebly and it briefly explains it but it links you to a Youtube tutorial on how to actually create a website. So if you have no time to read, just click that Youtube link and you are set! 




That's about it for the focused topics but I wanted to mention that my class had a Skype session with a man a part of the police department in Memphis Tennessee. We talked about how technology has grown and changed in police departments and what that means for us and our safety. Since bodycams are almost a mandatory regulation for police, it has created a new area in the department for technology and how to review footage, where to store it, and things of that nature. It was an interesting session and I never thought about the technology used in the police department.


Okie that's it for this week!!! Have a great Thanksgiving/Holiday week!