Legal
and Ethical Contexts in my Digital Practice
An ethical dilemma that I have faced was
whether or not to make student's indiividual blogs public.
I will use Hall’s questions to guide the process of what happened
(2001).
Distinguish
between personal and professional values
My personal values around social media are
a belief that personal information should be kept private. So my own personal social media is quite
private and only shared with trusted friends.
For media that I use professionally such as my Twitter account I don’t
share personal information.
Even though student work is often
personal, I have a professional value that “published” work by students is in
the public domain. Work on the wall in
the school corridors is similar to work on a school blog. A school blog is more controlled than some
other social media in that it is possible to moderate all comments so that
undesirable interactions or predatory behaviour does not become an issue.
I also believe that if children aged 11-13
are not specifically taught safe online practices and what and how to share and
interact they will get themselves into strife later. This is even more the case now where many
children are already on 13+ social networking sites from 9 years and up with no
guidance.
What
would happen if everyone did that?
It would be fine if all students this age
did personal blogging. However I have
seen instances where a teacher has not thought the process through and given
the students opportunities to co-construct practice guidelines and the students
have posted in ways that have brought disrepute to themselves and their
school.
Vary
the Variables
If the students in this case were adults
they would need to understand the difference between professional and personal
sharing. If the variable of the medium
were changed back to the physical school environment it only reinforces that
the same standards of publishing need to be applied.
What
would a good teacher do?
A good teacher promotes the wellbeing of
learners and protects them from harm (Education Council, 2016). However,
prevention is better than response and potential risks can be managed through
cybersafety agreements, including parental consent and we also developed a
co-constructed blogging agreement. In
order for young people to become confident and safe online participants, they
need to be guided into independent practice (Ministry of Education, 2016).
Nurture
Disagreement
At the time, we believed the biggest
disagreement would come from parents. So
we opened up conversation with parents and invited them into the classroom to
see how blogging works, teach them how to respond to their children’s blog
posts and the safeguards we had in place to protect them from unwanted
attention (comment moderation).
Overall it was decided that the benefits
outweighed the risks and we felt we could create a social media network that
enabled the students to learn safe practices.
References
Education Council (2016). Our Code Our Standards – code of
professional responsibility and standards for the teaching profession.
Hall, A. (2001). What ought I to do, all things considered?
An approach to the exploration of ethical problems by teachers.
Paper presented at the IIPE Conference, Brisbane. Retrieved from http://www.educationalleaders.govt.nz/Culture/Developing-leaders/What-Ought-I-to-Do-All-Things-Considered-An-Approach-to-the-Exploration-of-Ethical-Problems-by-Teachers
Ministry of Education. (2016). Digital Technology – safe and responsible
use in schools. New Zealand Government.
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