The next generation

Today I watched.  I watched a video made by teachers who want the world of teaching to catch up with the world of learning.  The students of today's schools are ahead of their teachers by leaps and bounds especially in the area of technology.  They can operate, manipulate, and apply technology in ways that many grown adults can only gawk at in surprise.  It is going to take a new teacher to teach this generation.  It is going to take new creativity to balance out the fresh wave of information that has pulverized our society.  To create a digital identity is something most of us shake in our boots over, but kids as young as five or six already have a presence online.  I heard from a friend that a baby, barely a month old already has his own personal site set up by his parents.  What is the older generation going to do?  Sit by or catch up?  Here are a few of my thoughts.

For one thing, this idea scares me.  I was taught at an early age to keep my private life private.  You don't post things that you don't want seen where people can see it.  I applied that well until I started with my own digital identity.   Before I started this project of creating myself online, I googled myself (in the year 2000) and found nothing.  Today I have a facebook page, a blog, a name on a roster at an university, and I teach.  My life is as public as it can be less than a decade later.  This scares me.  Why?  What if I say something wrong?  What if I post a picture that in some way comes back to haunt me?  What if my religious convictions offend someone and they decide to stalk me?  What if my family is someday harmed because of my digital identity?  What if the government comes looking for me because I am considered dangerous or not safe anymore?  What is there to stop someone from finding all that there is about me?  I no longer feel free.  I no longer feel like I can say something to a friend and no have it being overheard.  Any good sixth grader worth his or her salt could hack my emails and find all sorts of incriminating evidence to have me fired, jailed, or worse.  Do I really want that as a teacher?  Do I want to be that open?  

Now, nobody go look at my stuff at once!