Ethical Practices of Technology Use

Julie Danks

EDU 697 Capstone: A Project Approach

Dr. Phillip Orlando

May 15, 2016

Introduction

The field of educational technology and instructional design has developed over the years and has impacted both teachers and learners.  The 21^st century learner has grown accustomed to everyday technologies but technology use in the classroom can still pose many obstacles.  The use of educational technologies can bring about challenges for instructors, as well as for students.  Ethical challenges specifically call for instructors to design and develop effective teaching and learning strategies that can be constructed to tackle the ethical challenges that arise from usage of educational technologies.

Students use weblogs, and blogging, as a tool to improve their writing performance and skill set. The idea behind blogging, and daily collaborating writing, is to support and motivate student learning.  Weblogs provide an opportunity to write for an audience and engage in writing activities such a research and reflective writing.  Additionally, students are introduced to a place where dialogue and thoughts can develop and feedback is readily available. Educational technology tools, such as the weblog, teach students to be resourceful and connected learners.  Blogging in schools in an information-related activity; it requires and develops information skills in students (Clyde, 2005). 

MATLT Activity Redesign

The activity chosen for redesign is a blogging activity in which students were asked to respond to a critical thinking question.  This activity was chosen for two reasons: 1) the ethical technology practices and guidance and 2) for the additional theories and practices imbedded within the activity.  The ISTE (International Society of Technology in Education) Standards for teachers calls for teachers to promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility.  According to ISTE (2016), “The past decade has seen an exponential increase in digital tools and opportunities, which carry the need for students to master a new set of life skills for behaving responsibly online. Even as they sit in their classrooms, they are able to connect with people across the globe instantaneously via chats, email, blogs, social media, virtual conferences, comments and more.” The job of the classroom teacher is to provide guidance and sustained ethical practices during these 21st century learning opportunities.

Teachers are aligning their ethical practices and instructional design by incorporating the right kinds of educational technology tools in support of the differentiated instruction.  This practice offers a way to minimize respective limitations and enhance student strengths.  Weblogs offer an excellent example of the benefit of differentiated instruction.  Blogging expands instructional time for the students who need more by providing a user-friendly online format that reinforces strategies, concepts, reviews important information, and provide enrichment (Colombo & Colombo, 2007).   Additionally, students’ benefit from a collaborating learning environment that allows for social contact, unrestricted communication, and the opportunity to take an active role in planning their writing through positive interactions.  A study done by Lapp, Shea and Wolsley (2011) revealed that students were able to improve their writing based on the near-immediate feedback on weblogs.

Redesigning this activity called for more instructional design and modeling. Cohen (2012) reports that technology should be embedded into student learning and believes that there are abundance of tools from which teachers can choose to ethically integrate. In the past, traditional journals or writing notebooks, have been useful tools for improving writing and developing student skill set.  By redesigning this instructional practice into blogging allows the instructor to reach more individual needs, maximize comprehension, widen student exposure to peers and audiences, and support communication skills, strengthening the collaborative learning dynamic (Zawilinski, 2009).

Overcoming Challenges

Ethical practices are based in trust.  Ethical practices of technology use in the 21^st century carry a great deal of ethical responsibility.  The trust formed between the students and the teacher hold a responsibility of the teacher to exemplify those ethical practices.  The instructor, as well as the learners, must adapt, and adhere to, ethical practices such as respect, protection and well being of all those involved.  Lending to the assurance that all students are protected, the biggest challenge is keeping minor students and parents informed and educated on technology expectations and behaviors.

We often assume that students today are well versed in online etiquette but most are not.  Educators need to talk to learners, just like they would before a field trip, to inform them of potential dangers and expectations.   For example: students should not give out personal information online; Students should not talk or respond to some online who they are unfamiliar with; and finally, students should practice explicitly following online classroom instructions. Students are much more likely to understand good digital citizenship — the norms of appropriate, responsible technology use — when teachers model it on a regular basis. 

Conclusion

While social media sites are a new trend in student-centered learning environments, there are other ways to design instruction in a synchronous study setting that also exemplifies and ensures ethical usage of the technology.  Blogging has a proven track record for instructional strategies from differentiated learning (Colombo & Colombo, 2007) to cross-curricular and integrated real world experiences (Clyde, 2005).  Blogging in the classroom has the potential to motivate students, to build online collaboration, and enhance learning opportunities. 

Even though “violation of individual privacy and the abuse of confidential information have steadily proliferated” (Lin, 2007.p. 414), teachers and students need to abide by ethical procedures to ensure safety.  By providing guidelines, strict instructions, enforced limitations, parental consent, modeling, among other things, both instructors and learners seek to benefit from the importance of well-developed ethical standards.  It is imperative for instructors to develop effective learning materials and instructional design practices, as it is a central role of instructors and ethical standards as it pertains to ethical practices of educational technology use.

References

 Clyde, L. (2005). Educational blogging. Teacher Librarian 32, no. 3: 43-45. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.  Retrieved May 2, 2016.

Cohen, S. (2012). Apps Meet the Common Core State Standards in

Writing. Teacher Librarian 40, no. 2: 32.MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost.  Retrieved May 13, 2016.

Colombo, M. & Colombo, P. (2007). Using blogs to improve differentiated Instruction. Education Digest 73, no. 4: 10-14. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost.  Retrieved May 11, 2016.

ISTE Standards, Digital Age Learning (2015).  Retrieved on May 10, 2016 from:  http://www.iste.org/standards/standards-for-students

Lapp, D., Shea, A., and Wolsey, T.D.(2011). Blogging and Audience Awareness. Journal Of Education 191, no. 1: 33. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost.

Lin, H. (2007).  The ethics of instructional technology: Issues and coping strategies experienced by professional technologists in design and training situations in higher education. Educational Technology Research & Development, 55(5), 411-437. doi:10.1007/s11423-006-9029-y

Zawilinski, L. (2009). HOT Blogging: A Framework for Blogging to Promote Higher Order Thinking. Reading Teacher 62, no. 8: 650-661. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost