When educators assemble, as many did recently at the NAIS Conference, they often compare notes. There may be talk about new initiatives; but more often, the talk turns to recognition of shared concerns ... internal stresses and external threats. It is a complicated time for educators: expectations continue to rise whether resources do or not. And a new generation of parents with distinctive motivations has necessitated a re-evaluation of a host of school policies and practices.

These parents are true digital natives; and their children are second-generation. For them, the digital world is not a country to visit; it is their neighborhood. And the digital world is merely an extension of their physical one. In fact, they have documented and globally distributed hundreds (perhaps thousands) of moments in their lives. Their digital photos, tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, cellphone tracking, and voice message transcriptions are now part of an enormous database of collective memory. Their highs and lows, their good decisions and errors of judgement ... all on permanent and retrieval display.

Unlike digital memory, human memory is fallible and malleable; it can distort, reshape, and forget (which is often a blessing). But in the digital world, nothing is forgotten. A friend of mine will occasionally comment when someone (child, adolescent, or adult) makes an ill-advised choice or behaves badly: "No one wants to be remembered for his or her worst day." That is very true. However, in digital time, past actions remain inescapably present.  

 

Many schools are working hard to develop digital citizenship in their students by defining acceptable boundaries, and emphasizing appropriate etiquette and safety. For many of our students (even our youngest ones), their lives are already entwined in this web. Cautionary swim lessons can seem quaint to a generation who is already frolicking in the deep end.   

As educators, when we talk about our responsibility to prepare our students for the future, we focus on a host of skills: we emphasize the ability to ask questions, to identify and retrieve relevant information, and to utilize and shape data to solve problems; we emphasize their curiosity, innovation, perseverance, teamwork, etc. Perhaps, we should also help them to learn to live in a new reality: a world of unprecedented transparency, and a world where their past (their worst and best moments) will never be more than a click away. In such a world, the values we instill may well provide our students with the courage to face their past and their future.