In-Depth – Blog Post #2

Hello! Welcome to my Second Blog Post for My 2021 In-Depth Project!

Progress Report

Since my last blog post, I’ve had much progress on my In-Depth Project. The weekend after my first update, I got a bass guitar and an amp. I learned how to adjust the amp and the bass, volume wise. I had some trouble at first as there were so many dials on the amp as well as some on the bass itself. But after my mentor told me what the dials on the bass meant, it began to make more sense. Oh! I also had my first meeting with my mentor! A week after my first blog post, I set up a meeting with my mentor, Tito Paul. As it was my first year doing anything similar to this project, I was adequately nervous for the meeting, even if I knew him beforehand. I hadn’t known what to prepare so I had a notebook to take notes, but that was about it. During the meeting I asked some of the questions that I wrote in my learning contract and attempted small talk. Key word attempted. But near the end of the meeting, I panicked and my mind blanked while looking for another question to ask. So, I ended up ending the meeting earlier than I had originally planned. (Later to make up for the meeting, I asked if mentor was available the next week for a meeting) However, despite the short meeting I as able to learn a lot. Because I had a few questions prepared on the learning contract, in the beginning I ended up learning a lot about the bass guitar itself rather then playing it. I learned how the bass guitar differed from the piano and how it was similar. I also learned how notes progressed on the fretboard, which I thought was really mind-blowing as I had never known what notes on a fretboard moved up by semitones (half steps). I also found it interesting when Tito Paul told me about the ‘role’ of a bass in a song. He told me that in a song, the bass plays a melody that is usually repeats and is constant. He compared it to keeping beat, like how a drum does. Near the end, I asked him if there was anything that he thought would be easy to learn or practice for the next week(s). He taught me an ‘exercise’ that I could do with the different styles of plucking the strings to get fast at moving between strings.

 

How to Have a Beautiful Mind – Edward De Bono

This year for In-Depth, we’re using the book “How to Have a Beautiful Mind” by Edward De Bono to guide us through the project. The book talks about how to have a beautiful mind (as the title explains) and how to have beautiful conversation with others. Over the course of a few weeks, we’ll learn about the skills talked about in the book and apply them to our In-Depth project. This week we read chapters one to three.

 

Chapter One

Chapter One was all about how to agree with someone. One of the points that de Bono mentions in this chapter is to try and put effort into finding bits of what the other person is saying that you agree with. When I read this part, I thought that it was a pretty smart thing to think about. It causes you to really listen to what they’re saying and try to look for positives. I tried this when I was with Tito Paul when he was trying to explain how a bass works in a musical piece. I wanted to genuinely agree with what he was saying, but I didn’t understand where he was coming from. So I tried to look for points where he and I could both relate, him being self-taught and me being classically trained (both equally great ways to learn an instrument by the way). Eventually we got to a point where I could understand what he was trying to imply and therefore was able to agree with it. This happened multiple times during the meeting such as when he was trying to explain how the notes progressed. I was able to relate it to a keyboard moving up by semitones (half steps).

De Bono also mentioned in the chapter to not agree all the time with what the other is saying. He talked about how that doesn’t make the conversation interesting. While I agreed completely with what he was saying, I realized that that’s what I’ve always been doing for a large portion of my life. I was always too scared to disagree as to avoid conflict. Realizing this I decided that I would try to step out of the box I’ve pushed myself into. During the meeting, I didn’t just always nod along to everything he said. I tried to ask questions and ask why he thought one way was better or one exercise would help etc.

 

Chapter Two

In Chapter Two, de Bono talks about how to disagree with someone. I found this chapter to be really interesting as I think learning how to disagree with someone is something I ought to learn. I found this topic much harder to use when with my mentor. My mentor was so nice it was difficult to disagree with him! However, though there was nothing said that concerned my ‘truth’, I was able to recognize some of the points de Bono talks about concerning disagreeing during our conversation. One that I noticed was the point he made about different experiences. I mentioned before that I was classically trained in piano and Tito Paul was self-taught bass guitar. Because of this, we had different views and knowledge based on our backgrounds and experiences. However, despite this, we made an effort to understand where the other was coming from. We also tried to make an effort to learn what the other was talking about. For example, I was talking about scales because that’s part of how I learned piano, and Tito Paul didn’t really know much about scales. But he made the effort to look it up so that we could talk about something that we’d both understand (which was very kind of him).

 

Chapter Three

In the book How to Have a Beautiful Mind, de Bono dedicates a chapter to learning how to differ. This chapter was really interesting because I didn’t know ‘differing’ was any different to disagreeing. He mentions preference in this chapter, which I thought was pretty cool. I will often think about how preference would influence your Big Truths and how you view the world. So, seeing it put into words was very informative and taught me a lot about how preference can cause you to differ. I noticed this when Tito Paul and I were talking about how to pluck a bass guitar string. There were four different ways. Slapping the string, Plucking the string (with thumb and pointer finger), strumming the string (with your thumb), and using a pick. Tito Paul told me that he preferred the pick because that’s how he learned it and he felt more comfortable with it. Me on the other hand preferred using my thumb to strum or thumb and pointer finger to pluck. Maybe this had to do with me playing a little bit of acoustic guitar before or using my hands when playing piano? But in the end, Tito Paul said whatever works best for you is the one you should stick with (unless you’re learning how to slap the bass as a style of playing). That was what part of the exercise he gave me earlier was for. I was to try out the different style playing to see what worked the best for me.

 

In-Depth – Blog Post #1

Intro – What is In-Depth?

In-Depth is a big part of the TALONS curriculum. The project is done annually and takes place over the course of five months. The project requires the students to pick a skill or topic that they want to develop over the time given. (ex. ASL, computer programming, rollerblading etc.) It’s also good to mention that when choosing your skill, it’s important that you choose a topic that you’re passionate about. As no one wants to spend 5 months over a skill they find boring! Before starting the project, they also must choose a mentor. Their mentor is an expert in the skill chosen and will help the student if they have any questions or if they need help.  Students then learn as much as they can about their skill in the best way they can. Throughout the five months, they document their progress with blog posts and at the end they’ll have a final product prepared to show their learning.

 

What is My Skill and What Will I Learn?

For my In-Depth skill I chose to learn the bass guitar! To start, some of the basic information that I want to learn will be the parts and string names of the bass guitar. This will provide me with a foundation to learning how to play the instrument. After that I will be able to learn how to hold the guitar and play the strings. Later, building off of that, I can learn how to play along to songs and play scales. (such as the blues scale, dorian scale etc.) Some extra information that I thought would be interesting to learn about would be how bass guitar contributes to a song and how a bass line is decided or made.

 

Why Did I Choose My Skill?

I haven’t always liked music. But when I really started to get into it, I REALLY tried my best to know as much about it as I could.  Part of that was me wanting to learn about and how to play as many different instruments as I could. The steadiness and rich sound is what drew me the most towards the bass. I’ve always wanted to try learning how to play but I always put it off, so now I have an excuse to learn!

 

Who’s My Mentor?

My mentor for my project is tito Paul. He plays the bass guitar as one of his hobbies as well as a band that my dad is also in. He’s passionate about playing the bass guitar and I think that’s really important when playing an instrument.

 

What Can Others Do to Help?

The people around me most when I’ll be practicing will probably be my family. So hopefully my family can help remind me to practice when I forget or be my mock audience when I need to perform in front of someone. I’m also working with my mentor, tito Paul, so I can ask him questions that he can hopefully answer (thanks tito Paul!) Luckily, I’ll also be around my other classmates who are also doing the same project. Albeit not the same skill, we can still remind each other about practicing or getting a blog post done.

 

Resources

When you’re learning to play an instrument, it’s probably a good idea to have a variety of resources in case you don’t understand a concept explained one way. Some of my resources are going to be books I can borrow from the library or buy somewhere. I’m also going to use a variety of online resources such as websites, blogs and YouTube videos as they’re easy to access and if I need a visual I can use YouTube to watch someone. To get a better idea of how pro bass guitarists play, I was thinking of looking for videos of some famous/professional bass guitarists. For example, these videos of George porter playing bass (which I thought sounded very funky and very cool) and Thundercat who’s bass guitar style I found really interesting. I could also listen to some songs that demonstrate bass guitar in a great way. Of course, I also have tito Paul who I can hopefully ask questions if I have any.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIkrdg18Ngc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8FBaYlOkEA

 

My Timeline

I made a timeline for my In-Depth which I can hopefully stick to. I left lots of room near the end for more practice or in case I need extra time to learn something.

 Find a mentor, tell them the details of the project and get the forms done  Before January 10th  
 Rent/borrow/purchase a bass guitar as well as find possible resources such as books or videos  Before winter break ends (or even a few days [3-4] days after)  
 Learn the parts of the bass guitar  During first week of learning  
 Learn how to care for it (storage, how to plug it in, when to change certain parts)  During first week of learning  
 How to pluck the strings and how to hold my hands on the fret board  Second week of learning  
 Learn how to play notes and how the notes progress along the fretboard  Third week of learning  
 Have the first meeting with mentor  Second week of learning  
 Learn scales (10)  fifth week of learning  
Learn arpeggios  ninth week of learning  
 Learn the different styles of playing the bass

(can relate it to musical theory or piano)

thirteenth week of learning  
 Try playing along to songs (look up the notes online for the song)  fifteenth week of learning  
 Practice practice practice  All 5 months!  
 How to tune a bass guitar  First week of learning  
 How to read sheet music for bass guitar  Fourth week of learning  
 Have second meeting with mentor  Fourth week of learning  
 Have third meeting with mentor  Sixth week of learning  
Have fourth meeting with mentor eighth week of learning
Have sixth meeting with mentor Twelfth week of learning
Have seventh meeting with mentor Fourteenth week of learning
Have eighth meeting with mentor Sixteenth week of learning
Have ninth meeting with mentor Eighteenth week of learning
Have tenth meeting with mentor Twentieth week of learning

 

What I’ve Accomplished So Far

So far I’ve done some research on the parts of the guitar and saw some videos of people playing the bass guitar to get used to how they hold or play it. I’ve focused my time on getting a mentor (which I did yay!) So now I’m just waiting for the paperwork before I can start planning the meetings with him. This week or next I want to get the bass guitar and amp from Long and McQuade. Over the winter break we looked at renting them and I did some research on what guitar would be best. So hopefully I can look and maybe rent one this week!

 

Learning Center

Hello!

How are you? good? that’s great. Today I have for you my learning center that I did on my eminent person, Junko Tabei.

Are you interested yet? click here to see my presentation!

Feel free to leave a comment down below and I will try my very best to get back to you as soon as I can!

Happy learning center-ing!

 

Core Competency Activity – Grit and Resilience

During Quarter 1, what went well for you? Explain. Examples: being back in the classroom, having only two courses, seeing my friends, keeping up with homework, playing volleyball, improving math, helping plan a virtual assembly, becoming more fit.

Being more social this quarter was something that I think went well for me. During quarantine I rarely talked to anyone outside of my family, and I think that that made me a lot sadder than usual. Because I was around more people, talking and interacting with new people, I felt significantly happier than I did in quarantine. Another aspect that I think went well for me this quarter was being in a classroom and learning again. During online learning I had a hard time listening and focusing on what we were learning, so I found it really difficult to learn in an online setting. When I got back into the classroom, I was able to learn better and actually enjoy myself while learning as well.

 

During Quarter 1, what did you find challenging or disappointing or stressful? Explain.

For me, I found that the challenge of having 2 courses packed into one quarter was really stressful. When my courses started, I was always stressed about learning a language as well as focusing on science at the same time. Even though we had 2-hour classes and only 2 subjects, I always thought I needed more time to let everything sink in. Though near the end of the quarter it got a little bit easier, I still am a little worried about forgetting everything until next year.

 

Think of ONE thing you really want to improve in Quarter 2 (and Q 3&4). Examples: a school subject, a sport, time spent on homework/studying, playing a musical instrument, leadership skills, a language, photography, a relationship, general fitness.

Next quarter, I want to improve on my balancing skills. Not the literal one-foot balancing, but giving equal time to all of my interests and needs. Sometimes, I found myself spending too much time on schoolwork and neglecting my need for other needs or at other times, spending too much time on the computer and neglecting my schoolwork. If I were to give one specific example, I want to try and spend more time on playing and practicing my instrument (the piano) because it makes me happy and I like that. Overall, I just want to practice more because I tend to not make time for it at all.

 

What are two specific actions that you can start doing every day to get closer to your goal? How long will you spend on this action each day? What part of the day?

  1. I can set a specific time where I stop and sit at the piano to practice or just play around. And I can make sure I don’t overdo it by setting a time when I have to get off to work on other work. For example, I can start at 5:00pm and end at 6:00pm.

2. I can choose or make a list of songs that I want to learn or learn by ear on the piano. This way I can keep motivated and always have something that I look forward to playing. I can keep                     this list by the piano or keep it as a list on my phone so I can remember it and I can use it whenever I set a time to play.

 

If you experience challenges, what might you do to work through them? Examples: ask help from a friend or parent; break the task into smaller chunks; “google” how other people may deal with similar problems.

I if start to start ignoring the time I set for myself to play, I can ask my parents or brothers to remind me when my timer or whatever I’ll use goes off so that I’m more motivated or reminded. I can also ask my brothers to play along with me when I start to feel less motivated to play. Sometimes when my brothers play along with me to a song or something, I feel more motivated and excited to practice. I can also set tiny goals like preforming in front of family so that I have something to work towards.

How to be a Real Success

R – Relationships

Relationship rules are rules that basically rules to having good and healthy relationships with yourself and the people around you. When I first heard the term relationship rules, I thought that relationships didn’t need rules and that it was too restricting to have rules. However, as we learned more, I was surprised to realize that the rules were in fact not limiting at all and were actually some really good advice! One of the first things that surprised me about the relationship rules was that number one on the list was to love and accept yourself. I was kind of surprised because that last thing I expected on a relationship rules list was something about yourself! The rules stated that since the only relationship that will last forever is with yourself and that you have to be able to have a good relationship with yourself before having a healthy relationship with others. Which when I think about it makes complete sense. If I were to sum up the next few things on the list, I would say that you had to really put energy into knowing the other person and value them and your relationship. This seems really obvious at first glance, but to me, it actually gave me some really good pointers when having and maintaining relationships, something that I feel like I struggle with sometimes. A few good points that I want to remember are remembering someone’s name and focusing on the other persons interests.

The reason I chose this little piece of information to write about was because it was something that I found really helpful. I found myself referring back to these rules and making sure that whoever I’m talking to, I’m giving my full attention. Something that I found really helpful was the rule that said to focus on their interests. Though it seems a little self-conceited, (and probably is) when I would talk to someone and the conversation would dwindle down, I would panic and start telling them about myself as it was the only thing that I knew that I knew a lot about. So, by having this rule of focusing on their interests, I’m able to remember to slow down and ask them a question instead.

The relationship rules will prove very helpful during my grade 9 year, and any year in that matter. I think that a very big part in school and TALONS in general is relationships. Whether that be making them or maintaining them. So as I’m starting to meet more of the grade 9’s in my class, I think that these points will help me become more confident in my skills in meeting new people as well as making the person that I’m talking to feel comfortable For example if I were to start talking to a grade 9 in Science that I haven’t met yet, I would remember to remember their name, ask them about themselves and their interests, and to really value them as a person and my relationship with them.

 

E – Equipping

One point that really stood out to me during the Equipping lesson was the actual equipping itself. The book explained equipping as preparing someone in a way to complete a task. I never really actually considered or I guess realized that equipping someone was really important to leadership. For the longest time I had thought that by doing all the work myself, I was helping the other person. So finding out that equipping others was important and that doing all the work myself didn’t actually help them was really interesting and cool to learn about. But since that is a really broad topic, I want to focus on the Why People Fail to Equip Others section and what I want to do to not do those things. To me, the purpose of this list was to show the reader what they were doing wrong. You can’t really fix your mistakes without knowing what to fix. A few things on the list included failing to equip others because you enjoy doing the tasks yourself, wanting to keep control and underestimating the general potential and leadership potential in the people around you.

I chose this as something that I wanted to focus on this year because it reminds me of what not to do. As I mentioned before, I didn’t really know about equipping others, so when I looked at this list, I got a clearer idea of what I should be doing instead. It kind of made me realize my mistakes in a way.

I think that I can apply this list to many things in my grade 9 year. I can use it to remind myself of what not to do when working with others so that the other people in my group learn something and I don’t end up stressing myself out with unnecessary work. For example, if I’m in a group project that involves research, typing out information and making a model, I can remind myself of the rule to not underestimate others and I could give someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience with making models a chance at doing it. I could also use the rule to not be in the habit in doing all the work and use that to remind myself to let everyone else do work as well and that everyone deserves an equal chance to do and learn something.

 

A – Attitude

One of the things that I remember from the A section is from the Attitude Inventory. It was the fourth question that asked “Do you foster a healthy attitude in yourself for your family, friends, co-workers?” When I saw this, it forced me to see how my attitude can affect others and their attitudes. You could reword it as “Do you have a positive attitude inside yourself and do you try and help others around you have a positive attitude as well.”

I chose this as a focus this year because it was something that actually caused me to stop and think. When I saw this question, it made me stop and wonder if I did cause the people around me to have a good attitude as well. It also reminded me that my attitude has an affect on others as well, as sometimes I can get caught up in my emotions that I forget that it can affect other people.

I can incorporate this into my grade 9 year in many different ways. I think that by reminding myself of this rule/question every so often, I will be able to be more aware of myself and my attitude with the knowledge that it can affect other people. This way I can have a better attitude myself and help other people around me develop a healthier and more positive point of view. For example, If I’m feeling more down than usual, I wouldn’t put that on others knowing that it will affect their attitude as well.

 

L – Leadership

The Law of the Process is something that stayed in my head a while after the lessons. This law was something that said that leaders take time to develop, and that it doesn’t just take a day to become a good leader. Or to put it into the books’ words “Leaders develop daily, not in a day” Something that John Maxwell said after this also stuck with me. He mentioned something along the lines that good leaders can be made and not just born. This stuck with me because I often hear that good leaders are born, and that can discourage me sometimes because I’ll often think that I wasn’t cut out to be a leader or I wasn’t born as someone who could be a leader. So it’s reassuring to know that you can still grow to be a good leader.

I chose this because, as I said before, I often don’t think I was “born” or made to be a leader. So This quote stuck with me because it reminded me that I can grow to become one and that it takes time and effort to accomplish it.

I can use this throughout my year and throughout the rest of my life. By knowing that leaders take time to develop, I can work towards becoming a great leader and put effort into reaching this goal. I think that it will also help me become less frustrated with myself when I make a mistake in a leadership position. For example, if I were to attend another leadership conference or info session, I will be able to retain the information that I was given and put it to use throughout the years to come. This way I won’t just forget or stop doing the information that was given to me just a day after.

Ecological Footprint Assignment

I was only able to do the changes for a week.

Comparison of Footprint (in hectares)

(taken from the discord server)

8.7 – Bana

8.59 – Kalayla (Me)

7.9 – Ben

6.8 – Draedon

7.45 – Justin

7.45 – Kavyan

11.3 – Colin

7.20 – Clara

I noticed how everyone’s footprint varies, which was interesting to me because I thought that everyone’s would be really similar. I also noticed how my is a little higher than some, so I want to try and reduce it more.

 

10 Things I Can Change

  • Take shorter showers (1-2 minutes)
  • Donate some of the clothes that I don’t use to a second-hand store
  • Spend generally no extra time on the tv or computer (unless it’s for school)
  • Try to use less garbage (enough garbage to fill a cup only per day or none at all)
  • Not to waste any food at all
  • To not eat wild or farmed fish
  • To not eat any dairy products
  • Instead of doing activities that involve driving somewhere, convince my family to do something like biking somewhere instead
  • Do activities that involve very little equipment rather than ones that involve a lot
  • Spend less money everyday

 

Five Changes That I Can Actually Change

  • Take shorter showers (1-2 minutes)
  • Donate the clothes I don’t wear to a second-hand store
  • Try to use less garbage (enough garbage to fill a cup only per day or none at all)
  • To not eat any dairy products
  • Don’t waste any food at all

 

 

Why Did I Choose These?

For a lot of the do-able ones that I chose, I chose because it was something I could do myself and not have to rely too much on others. For starters, I picked “take shorter showers” because it was something I could change myself. It was also an activity that I sometimes drag on for a long time, so it was something I genuinely wanted to change. Next, I choose to donate the clothes I don’t wear to a second-hand store, I chose this one because it is again something that is do-able, but also something that I hope will benefit someone else. If I give my clothes to a store where someone else can also enjoy them, then two people benefit, I can reduce my ecological footprint and another person gets cool clothes. Next, I chose to try and use less garbage in a day. This is something I chose because eating packaged food creates a lot of garbage and it requires me to really think about what I’m eating through the day. I’m not saying that all packaged foods are really bad for you, but if I generally try to eat things that my family and I have made at home instead of going out and buying individually wrapped snacks, not only will I create less garbage, but eat healthier. Next, I chose to try and not eat any dairy products. This is something that I put on the list because it was between this and not eating fish/seafood. Since I already don’t eat beef, pork and all that jazz, it’s already hard on my parents to decide on dinners. If I stopped eating fish even for a week, it would be harder on them to make dinner and I didn’t want to trouble them with that. Plus, eating no dairy products sounded like a challenge since I use milk a lot for smoothies. Next, I chose to not waste any food at all. I picked this for the list because it’s something that I tend to do a lot and something I really want to change about myself. I want to try and not waste any food so that both money and food aren’t wasted as well.

 

Specific Ways I Will Complete These Changes

  1. Take Shorter Showers

 

Whenever I take a shower this week, I will set a timer for 1 minute and 50 seconds so that I know that when the timer goes, I should get out of the shower.

 

  1. Donate the Clothes That I Don’t Use to a Second-Hand Store

 

This week, I’ll pick out all of the clothes that I haven’t worn in the past 2 weeks or don’t want anymore and put them in a bag/box. Then this weekend I will go to a second-hand store for clothes (Plato’s Closet) with my parents and donate my clothes to the store for others to buy.

 

  1. Try to Use Less to No Garbage in a Day

 

  1. Whenever I make lunches or snack on something, I will make sure that I’m not bringing or eating anything that comes in individual packaging. For example, instead of eating something like a seaweed packet, I can choose something like an apple or orange.

 

  1. Don’t Eat Any Dairy Products

 

  1. Instead of having things like smoothies or a glass of chocolate milk for dessert, I will try to find substitutes that don’t involve dairy. And of course, I still have to get dairy in my daily diet somehow, so maybe I can try almond milk this week

 

  1. Don’t Waste Any Food at All

 

  1. This week, to try and not waste any food, I will take very small portions first so that I don’t take more than I can eat. I can do this for lunches at school as well.

 

The Reflection

Easy Changes

 

Some of the changes that I had to do for this project were pretty easy. For starters, taking shorter showers was pretty easy because I had set a timer and when I was really focused, I was able to get it done really quickly as well. I also found using less garbage easy because this week my family and I cooked a lot more instead of going out or buying packaged snacks from the store. This made it a lot easier to use less garbage. Thirdly, not eating dairy products was surprisingly easy. I had thought it would be hard, but almond milk doesn’t taste too bad and I didn’t really miss eating dairy products.

 

Harder Changes

I found that donating my clothes was something that I had a hard time doing. I actually have all the clothes in a bag prepared to be donated, however my parents didn’t have any time to drive me to the second-hand store this week. Secondly, I found not throwing away any food at all a little difficult. Which sounds really bad. I tried the take smaller portions strategy that I thought of earlier, and that worked out really well. I ended up throwing away less than 1/8 of my food which didn’t quite meet my goal of none at all. I found hard to eat all my food because I don’t usually eat full meals, so during long weekends when my whole family is home and eating all together, it was hard to finish all the food with all the full meals that my parents had time to cook. Especially during thanksgiving.

 

Obstacles I Encountered

Along the way, I encountered some obstacles. One of them was packing lunches, if it was a “normal” weekday, I would’ve thrown anything I could find into my lunch. But because I had to more aware of what I was packing, it was a little harder to make lunches in the morning. I also found that I was eating less because I wasn’t eating dairy products, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I think this was because I wasn’t used to having to eliminate dairy products out of my diet, so I settled for eating less rather than finding a substitute which is probably a problem. Having my parents involved was also a little bit of a challenge. Since donating my clothes to a second-hand store that was a little farther away required my parents driving me there, it was difficult to try and find time for all of us go.

 

Future Steps

Because of this assignment, I definitely will do things differently in the future. One, I want to take shorter showers like I did this week. It wasn’t that hard to do and if that helps reduce my ecological footprint, then I will gladly try to shorten my showers. Next, I want to go to donate my clothes like I said I would and also try to do so more in the future. This is something that I said I would do, so I want to follow through with what I said. I also think it’s something that would help not only me but also others. Something else that I want to overall in the future is try and be more conscious of my ecological footprint. Previously, I wasn’t really aware of how my actions affected my ecological footprint, so I feel like if I’m more aware of this, I will be able to do a better job of reducing it.

Digital Footprint Assignment

1. How might your digital footprint affect your future opportunities? Give at least two examples.

Your digital footprint is something that is permanent, and because of that it can come back to haunt you. For example, when you’re older and looking for a job. In one scenario, your digital footprint reflects a good person and tells the employer or anyone looking at your footprint positive things about yourself, making them more likely to hire you. In another less-fortunate scenario, your digital footprint shows a not so good side of you and tells anyone looking at it that you make not-so good decisions. This would obviously cause employers to be less inclined to hire you as their employee.

Another example might be a school you’re hoping to attend in the future. If your dream school looks at your social medias or posts and they see someone that they would trust to represent their school, you would have a greater chance of getting in. If your social medias and posts reflected a person who is irresponsible and makes bad decisions, the school will then probably reconsider you as a candidate and your chance of getting in drops dramatically.

2. Describe at least three strategies that you can use to keep your digital footprint appropriate and safe.

There are many different ways to keep your digital footprint safe and appropriate.

One way you can do this is by asking yourself if this is appropriate before you post. Sometimes you can post something in a flash of anger or spite, so it’s always good to take a moment before posting to ask yourself if what your doing will hurt anyone.

Another way you can keep your digital footprint safe is by being aware that posting something to a private account doesn’t ensure privacy. People who you’ve approved to see your private posts can still screenshot or capture your post and it can get out into the internet. So being aware of this before putting something up is always good to have in mind.

Thirdly, You can also keep your digital footprint appropriate by making sure the things that you say and show on the internet reflect you as yourself. Making sure that what you’re saying and showing online is something that you would do in your everyday life is a good filter to have on your internet presence.

3. If you could go back in time, is there anything that you would do differently online? Think of what advice you would pass on to your younger self or other students.

If I had to give advice to my younger self or the younger generation about a digital footprint, I would say don’t be afraid to have one. Of course being safe about what you do online is is really important, no doubt about it. However up until a few years ago I was way to scared and intimidated about the consequences of your digital footprint to do anything related to myself on the internet. If I could go back in time, I maybe would’ve at least not been scared of the internets power and learned how you could have a safe and appropriate presence online. While a lot of not so good things can come out of having a bad digital footprint, a lot of good things can come out of having a good one!

Training Post

You are now going to create your very first post. In a separate tab or browser window, go to your Dashboard on the left and go to  Posts -> Add New.

1) Title – Create a title for your blog post. Your title will be: Digital Footprint Assignment

2) Body – This is where you place your content of the post – text, videos, pictures, etc. Follow the instructions on the Digital Footprint Assignment page to see what questions you need to answer here.

3) Tool Bar – In your toolbar you can “Add Media” and “Add Documents” into your posts, this is the best way to create visual representations. You can also change fonts, hyperlink, etc.

4) Publish – Here is where you control what items are public and private. You can also control when they are published to your website.

5) Categories – Here is where you choose where you want your post to go. This is your digital binder with all of your subjects. Make sure to categorize each post with the relevant subject. E.g. Categories -> English

6) Tags –  Here is where you tag posts with one or two of the most readily applicable Core Competencies. These tags can help you find things quicker on your blog and help you stay organised. E.g. Tag -> creativethinking

7) Publish – When you are done, simply “Publish” it. If it has been edited, press “Republish” to update with the latest version of the content.