Digital Footprint

Your digital footprint contains a permanent record of what you do online, including the sites you visit and the things you share. It even includes the data trail that you unintentionally leave, like websites that install cookies on your devices, apps that use your geolocation, as well as social media that uses your likes, shares, and comments to build a profile about you.

Unlike footprints in the sand, your digital footprint can follow you throughout your life. In this video you will learn about the importance of your online reputation and how your unique set of traceable digital activities, actions, contributions, and communications manifested on the Internet or digital devices can impact you. (Common Sense Education, 2021)

Direct Link: Follow the Digital Trail - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bRZdUtmH8k

Your interactions on social media are also considered part of your digital footprint. Social media can be a great place to connect, learn, and, most of all, share with friends and family. However, be cautious of oversharing. You are not obliged to share every second or moment of your life. Before you post, consider how what you share online can impact you and how others view you. Reflect on when and why you post something online and be think about how what you post makes you feel. It is okay to talk to your friends and family about your boundaries for tagging or posting about each other. As you watch this video, think about what oversharing means to you. (Common Sense Education, 2021)

Direct Link: Oversharing and Your Digital Footprint – https://youtu.be/ottnH427Fr8

Privacy and Security

Privacy is more than just what you choose to share or not share online. Never share private information online. Private information includes things that can identify you, like your full name, address, telephone number, birthday, and even which school you attend. You can share personal information, like your hobbies and favorite colors. Just be sure that the personal information that you do share is safe, responsible, and respectful. If you’re not sure what is safe to share, ask a trusted adult. (Common Sense Education, 2021)

So, how do you know who you are talking to online is really who they say they are? Watch this video, then consider who you are talking to online.

Direct Link: Who You're Talking to Online - https://youtu.be/DiI8Lj0_TGQ

For more information on online privacy and security, go to the FBI’s interactive Safe Online Surfing (FBI-SOS) site. The goal of FBI-SOS is to promote digital citizenship and help students learn about online safety while engaging in fun, interactive games. It was designed to address current Internet safety threats while keeping your specific grade level's online usage and knowledge in mind. We hope that you find the website beneficial and that you use the information to make yourself a safer digital citizen.

Online privacy and security is more than protecting your private information, it’s also about preventing and protecting you from cyberbullying. Cyberbullying is bullying that takes place over digital devices like smartphones, computers, and tablets. Cyberbullying can occur through texts and apps on smartphones and tablets, as well as online in social media and video games where people can view, participate in, or share content. Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, mean, or threatening content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Sometimes, cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behavior. In this video reflect and decide if the actions are cyberbullying or not.

Direct Link: Is it cyberbullying? - https://youtu.be/vtfMzmkYp9E

Because social media and other digital platforms (including comments, photos, posts, and content) can often be viewed by strangers as well as their acquaintances, cyberbullying can harm the online reputations of everyone involved, not just the person being bullied, but also those doing the bullying or participating in it. The content a person shares online – both their personal content as well as any negative, mean, or hurtful content – creates a permanent public record of their views, activities, and behavior. This public record can be thought of as an online reputation, which may be accessible to schools, employers, colleges, clubs, and others who may be researching an individual now or in the future. With this in mind, all states have laws requiring schools to respond to bullying. As cyberbullying has become more common with the increasing use of technology, many states now include cyberbullying, or mention cyberbullying offenses, under these laws. Schools may take action either as required by law, or with local or school policies that allow them to discipline or take other action. DoDEA does not tolerate bullying of any type, including cyberbullying, and has implemented a system-wide bully prevention program. DVS has a moral obligation to provide our students and the school community with the proper information, prevention strategies, and defenses to create a safe, accepting, and caring environment for all. For more information on school policies regarding cyberbullying, check out DVS Guidelines for Student Behavior in the DVS Handbook.

Check out Stopbullying.gov's Cyberbullying site for more information on cyberbullying, preventing cyberbullying, as well as how to deal with “haters”.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content, such as text, images, audio, video, or code, based on the data it has learned from. While generative AI can be used for various purposes, it also poses some academic integrity concerns, especially when it comes to writing assignments12
Some of the academic integrity concerns of using generative AI are:

• Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the act of presenting someone else’s work or ideas as one’s own, without proper acknowledgment or citation. Using generative AI to write assignments or parts of assignments is considered plagiarism, as it is not the original work of the student. Copying and pasting the response that the tool provides, or running material through multiple AI generators to avoid detection, are examples of plagiarism. 
• Lack of proper citation of sources: Citation is the practice of acknowledging the sources of information, ideas, or arguments that one uses in an academic work. Citation helps to avoid plagiarism, give credit to the original authors, support one’s claims with evidence, and enable readers to locate and verify the sources. Using generative AI to write assignments or parts of assignments does not exempt students from citing the sources that the tool used to generate the content.
• Inaccurate, misleading, biased, false, or limited information in responses to question prompts: Generative AI models are not infallible; they can produce content that is inaccurate, misleading, biased, false, or limited in scope or depth. This can happen because the models are trained on large amounts of data that may contain errors, inconsistencies, biases, or outdated information.

Translation Software

Translation software that converts English words to a target language works, and is useful, for example, when travelling, but the technology is not perfect. This means that some significant mistranslations will almost always occur and sometimes these sites produce pure nonsense and are not appropriate for use in world language courses.

Turning in an assignment with a translation derived from using translation software is another type of academic integrity violation and is considered cheating. Frequently, teachers recognize the use of such programs because of the characteristic "feel" of computer translations and the typical errors that occur. Additionally, teachers will have two students from opposite sides of the country or world submit identical pieces with these types of errors, which is a dead giveaway for the teacher.

If you need help with a translation on an assignment in your world language course, please reach out to your teacher. They are there to help you and support you as you work to improve your language skills.

Plagiarism

When completing written assignments or projects, your goal should be to look at what other people have done, analyze that information, properly synthesize it into your work, then give them credit on a works cited or reference page…not to copy/paste directly from the online source, and/or neglect to include a citation. This practice is known as plagiarism, or the act of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. Please note that you do not have to copy/paste text, “word for word”, for it to be considered plagiarism.

Check out this recent report from Turnitin on plagiarism: The Plagiarism Spectrum: Tagging Ten Types of Unoriginal Work Then view this video, and consider how copyright and fair use should be considered when gathering content for written assignments:

Direct Link: Creativity, Copyright, and Fair Use - https://youtu.be/xvZHNwBHirQ

Should you have a question about plagiarism, please ask your teacher before turning in something that could cause you to receive no credit for that project. Frequently, DVS teachers anticipate that students will need the support of a plagiarism checker and employ the use of Turnitin in Schoology. Turnitin assignments require you to upload your paper to see if all sources are properly cited, as well as conduct a check for similarity between your paper and other sources online. Turnitin will create a similarity report for you and your teacher to review, checking for similarity between your paper and the vast number of online sources. The goal of Turnitin is to help educators maintain academic integrity by ensuring original work from students, while giving students a tool, in the form of a similarity report for you to review, so you can go back and make corrections to your assignment to avoid academic integrity violations. Check out the following resources for using Turnitin when your teacher uses Turnitin Assignments in Schoology, and remember to ask your teacher if you have any questions or concerns:

Overview of Turnitin Assignments in Schoology

Understanding the Turnitin Similarity Report

If your teacher does not use Turnitin Assignments, you can still use Turnitin’s Google Draft Coach to help you with citations and similarity before you submit your final writing assignment. To access the Google Draft Coach, go to Google docs and open a new document. Then click add-ons and select Turnitin Draft Coach to access the tool. Please take a few moments to watch the video below to learn about using Google Draft Coach to check your assignment for plagiarism, best practices, and citations:

Overview of Turnitin's Google Draft Coach

Citing Sources

In your course(s), you may be required to conduct research to find information on various topics. There is nothing wrong with including other people's findings or creativity as a part of your project - as long as you give proper credit to those people. Your goal should be to look at what other people have done, analyze that information, properly synthesize it into your work, then give them credit to the author/creator on a works cited or reference page.

There are several places to go for information about citing sources (aka - giving credit to someone whose work you used) but your school’s media specialist is the best and closest source. When citing sources, you need to be able to tell who wrote or created the source you are using, as well as when and where it was published.

The best rule of thumb is that if you are in doubt about whether to cite a source…cite it. If you are not able to work with your school’s media specialist on citing sources, the following websites are a great place to start learning about citing sources:

Turnitin: How to Implement Citation and Paraphrasing into the Writing Process

Purdue University Online Writing Lab

Academic Integrity Attestation

All DVS students are required to abide by ethical academic standards. Academic dishonesty including plagiarism, cheating, copying the work of another, using technology for illicit purposes, or any unauthorized communication between students for the purpose of gaining advantage during an examination is strictly prohibited (though this list is not all inclusive). These expectations apply to all school-related tests, quizzes, reports, class assignments, and projects, both in and out of class. To help combat academic integrity violations, many teachers post attestation statements for students to agree, or attest, to before they take tests or submit written assignments:

I have read the DoDEA Virtual High School Academic Integrity policy. I understand that the DVHS Academic Integrity Policy covers all school related work including, but not limited to, class assignments, quizzes, projects, and exams. Additionally, though this list is not inclusive, I understand that the Academic Integrity Policy includes using a language translator or any form of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI such as Chat GPT, Chatbox, Bing Chat, etc.), plagiarism, cheating, copying the work of another student, copying answers from the internet, or copying any source other than the student’s own creation. Using technology for illicit purposes or any unauthorized communication between students for the purposes of gaining advantage on assignments or exams is strictly prohibited.

I acknowledge that I am expected to comply with these guidelines for academic honesty. Any cheating or copying may result in an administrative referral and a possible grade reduction to include a zero for the assignment with no chance for resubmission.