Program Outcome 5: "Exemplify ethical practices of technology usage."

 

Ethics + Technology + Education = ?

Ethics in educational technology should be at the forefront of every educators mind. As new technologies start to emerge, we want to make sure that ethically we are using that technology to solely benefit our students. Privacy, intellectual property, and social responsibility are crucially important to consider before handing a student any sort of technology.

 

My project that exemplies this importance is a blog on WikiSpace that I had created during my Masters Program. This blog shared my learning from that particular course over six weeks. I needed to keep ethical considerations in mind while creating this blog because of privacy concerns, intellectual property concerns, and social responsibility concerns.

 

The first ethical consideration is the issue on privacy. We have all been warned that whatever is posted on the Internet is public knowledge that can never be truly erased. We have been taught that we must think twice before pushing the post button on whatever social media platform we decide to engage in. A good ethical question to ask oneself is, “Is it acceptable for someone outside and individual’s social network to view that person’s social media information?” (Cain, J., & Fink III, J. L. (2010).) There needs to be clear guidelines and parameters set out for the students prior to them using social media so that this question can be answered in the early stages. I have created my particular assignment to only include those within my network (classmates) because those are the only people who I would want commenting/looking at my posts. If working with younger students, it is important to also consider the privacy laws that are set in place. According to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, student’s personal information cannot be collected without the consent of a parent or guardian. The social media platform would have to be monitored very carefully to make sure that no personal information was being exposed. I made sure that my assignment contained no personal information. I also changed my profile picture on my Twitter account to a beach scene. The blog does lead the viewer to my own Twitter account. I originally had a picture of myself as the cover photo but I decided, keeping in line with privacy concerns in social media, that it should not contain a real photo of myself.

 

The second ethical consideration to take into account is intellectual property. According to the ibstoi Code of Ethical Standards for Instructional Designers, respecting the intellectual property of another person is crucial in demonstrating strong ethical practices. I have created my blog by adding references to my blog post to make sure that I was not disrespecting the intellectual property of another person. I think that this ethical consideration is one of the most important ones because there are copyright laws that prohibit using another person’s ideas/writing. It is important as educators to educate our students on how to cite information properly so that they can use the social media platforms but in a respectful way.

 

The last ethical consideration is all about social mandates. The ibstoi Code of Ethical Standards for Instructional Designers states that there should be socially responsible goals and activities planned when using social media platforms. The teacher should be the one who defines these goals/activities, making sure that they are socially responsible. For example, if a student is required to take a stand on a societal issue it would be important for that student to comment on the other viewpoint as well as their own. I created a part of my blog where I ask my viewers to comment on my post with differing opinions than my own. This would open up a really good avenue to engage in constructive discussions with my peers.

Please find my blog below.