Legal and Ethical Dilemma’s in my Digital Teaching Practice

Legal and Ethical Dilemma’s in my Digital Teaching Practice

The huge growth in the use of digital technology and social media means that schools and teachers need to have an awareness of the ethical implications that can arise.  Teachers have an obligation to make students and whanau aware of these issues and support them to become reflective, considerate, and respectful gobal citizens, in the real world and online.

I teach in a Y6-Y8 class. All of our students have chromebooks and online Learning Blogs. The purpose of this, is so students can share their learning with their whanau and wider community and potentially reach a worldwide audience from which they can receive feedback. This provides students with exciting opportunities, but can also potentially exposure them to danger.

Potential dangers for our students can include:

Students could accidentally share information about themselves of their families that might put their personal safety at risk.

Students share photos of themselves, their families and their friends. They might not have obtained permission or photo’s could be copied and used inappropriately.

People might send inappropriate or unkind feedback about students learning because they do not know or understand the context of the learner or work that has been posted.

Corinna School has several policies to minimise the above risks and to keep students, teachers and whanau safe when online. The Te Mana o Kupe Kawa of Care was developed in 2014 when we formed a Trust to enable whanau to buy a chromebook for their child through a lease to own system. The Kawa of Care is an agreement between students, parents and schools to ensure the best care and responsibility is exercised with the chromebook during the student's time in the Te Mana o Kupe Programme. There are three important areas to acknowledge as a user of the chromebook:

• Responsible use agreement and what that looks for Insurance coverage:
  - student
  -Whanau

          -Teacher and school

• Chromebook to Home:
  -whanau engagement
  -connecting to the internet

We also have the Corinna School Internet Code of Conduct for Students, the Acceptable Use of Internet and Responsible Use Policy for teachers and support staff, and the Student/ whanau Computer, email and Internet Use Agreement. These policies provide important information around ethical issues, personal safety issues, responsibility around privacy and security and how we use social media and online enviornments including blogs, gamil Google Apps etc. These policies are discussed with students and whanau at enrolment and the agreements signed, and with new staff as part of there induction process.

Examples of our school guidlines that can help minimise ethical dilemma and safety concerns for students when using their learning blogs are:

• Do not give out personal information such as your address, phone number, parents/ guardian’s information or the name and location of your school without staff or parents permission.
• Inform staff/ parents right away if you come across any information that makes you feel uncomfortable.
• Do not post photos of yourself or others without seeking permission from everyone that can be identified in the photo as well as your parents and teachers.

To ensure, students and whanau are following the rules and guidlines, staff need to be frequently checking students use of their chromebooks and checking all blog posts and feedback. Teachers are resonsible for teaching cyber safety and supporting students to make good choices and keeping this on top for students and whanau.

If students break the Kawa of Care we remove digital devices from students and they are only returned when there has been  a ‘sorting out’ discussion (that sometimes involves parents) Eg. What did you do? What did you want to happen? What should you have done? Who was affected by this? How can we make this right? This consequence came from discussions with parents/ whanau.

Our school and teachers need to ensure that we are continuing to learn about how we can make positive ethical decisions and what proactive measures we might put in place to keep our school community safe. Guidelines such as  Digital Technology Safe and Responsible Use in School Policy and NetSafe’s Learn, guide, Protect model are useful resources to suport our teching and learning