Week 5: Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

The education council recognises ethics as four fundamental principals:

• Autonomy to treat people with rights that are to be honoured and defended
• Justice to share power and prevent the abuse of power
• Responsible care to do good and minimise harm to others
• Truth to be honest with others and self.

In today's classrooms, there has been noticeable shift in the way we teach, and the way children interact with their learning. This is mostly due to the increased use of digital devices in and within learning. With this comes a new thread of ethical issues that we were not facing even 10 years ago.

In my classroom I have been undertaking a digital journey through this postgrad, and through the use of twitter as a tool to interact with whanau. As safe as we try to make our class, we have very little to no control over what happens outside of the classroom walls, in cyberspace. As a teacher, I am trusting my students to use the net responsibly, and for learning purposes only. However, the guidelines around digital interaction at my school were loose, and not something that was always discussed with students. There was an incident earlier this year where a few students in my class proceeded t google inappropriate images online. Whilst the school has certain firewalls to stop this from being possible, there are some images that are deemed ok by the firewall, and not ok by any other standards. 

This was an issue that was taken very seriously by the school and children involved were dealt with by management. This prompted the school to construct a strong and clear digital policy. There were many discussions about what was ok and what was not, with staff opinions varying, however we went back to the 4 ethical principals. We needed to create a treaty where children signed on to a certain expectation of their behavior online. 

We also moved into a google school, with all the children in my class getting their own email addresses. There was a slight ethical dilemma with how intrusive we could be with these, and how much was their private email. The children were the stakeholders in this, and we had to have discussions around how much we would be able to control their individual emails, in order to keep them safe. However because it was a tool for school, we signed on to Hapara, where I can track what students send, receive, and create.

Hapara has provided teachers with a platform to keep an eye on what children are doing online, whilst giving children the freedom to use digital tools to aid their learning.

References:

Education Council. (n.d). The Education Council Code of Ethics for Certficated Teachers. Retrieved from https://educationcouncil.org.nz/content/code-of-ethics-certificated-teachers-0

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