Ethics 5220 Resources FtF

Welcome to the week on Ethics, Equity and Digital Citizenship.

Is there a “free lunch” with Google Classroom and Open Educational Resources? Should schools adopt policies that restrict teachers’ choice of online materials? How do behavior policies and classroom best practices apply to online learning environments? What new ethical challenges are presented when students are working online, from home, with video and within online publicly accessible spaces? 

While the ethical and legal issues of technology are not unique, in many ways the use of technology can amplify and modify the issues that teachers must consider and deal with, such as cheating on tests, plagiarism on essays, stranger danger, and bullying. These have always been concerns for teachers, but technology brings with it mobile cameras, sexting, cut/paste functions, identity theft, cloud storage of eportfolios, and cyber stalking.

When considering Ethics, skilled ethical thinkers routinely distinguish ethics from domains such as community social conventions (conventional thinking), religious beliefs and tenets (theological thinking), and the law (legal thinking). When working in schools there are the added restrictions of teacher contracts, professional standards, and district policies and guidelines. Perhaps surprisingly, the increase use of technology in schools affects many of these concerns.

Acceptable Use Policies (for teachers and students)

    Uniquely Connecticut

    The 2016 CT law concerning student data privacy lists 10 things (in Sec 2) that any contractor must provide in the form of written consent, that they will do, in order to protect student data. CT is such a small part of most company’s markets and making legally binding statements like these, in writing, exposes their small companies to such liability (should hacking or something like that happen to them), that they simply cannot afford to make such broad assurances (and risk being sued). So their lawyers advise them not to make such written consents to CT and simply do business elsewhere. While big companies like Google have ways of protecting themselves from liability, many smaller ed tech providers do not.

    Consider an example of small provider like Sumdog. While prior CT teacher experiences and Sumdog’s research suggest students enjoy and learn from personalized activities like those provided, the small company from Edinburgh UK has no intention of providing written assurances binding their small company to CT State law about student privacy. The company uses the “Freemium” funding model. But without the written contract, CT students cannot use Sumdog in school even for free.

    The impact of CT law is that CT schools are limited to large providers willing to assume the legal risks of stating they will fully protect student data privacy. In fact, in the new world of cybersecurity, we are ALL responsibility for protecting ourselves, our institutions, and our students by each doing our due diligence by completing timely updates, using encryption on our devices, and keeping up to date virus protection active. Certainly one way to ensure student data security is to severely limit students’ access to online tools. But is the BEST way to do it?  Consider asking around at your current school (clinical placement) to get the impact of this legislation and for this module consider the Ethical implications.

    CT approved 2020

    There are dozens of approved programs, but the list is limited and many teachers find their favorites cannot be used. Accessing this list requires an approved district login (I use my Ellington Public Schools connection here).

    Check out the Network tools available to schools from CT Education Network CEN:

     

    Ethics Theme 1: Digital Citizenship and Cybersecurity

    Ethics Theme 2: Student Data Privacy

    Ethics Theme 3: Cyberbullying and School Climate

    Ethics Theme 4: The Digital Divide

    Supplemental: Read more about it.

    Enduring Understanding- Student Learning Outcome from this module

    This module intends to prepare teachers for ISTE Standard for Educators 3c that states: Mentor students in safe, legal and ethical practices with digital tools and the protection of intellectual rights and property. So presumably to be a good mentor one would not only need to be prepared to behave ethically, but would able to provide guidance to the classroom and school-wide community on ethical use of technology. In addition, the CT-specific issue of required written student data security is presented for consideration.