Week 13 Question #1

Question #1: What are the legal, social, and ethical issues arising in the Digital Age?

Legal
Copyright violations were of concern in education before the advent of technology. Generally, copyright laws do not allow use without the owner's permission, but there are some occasions when such use is allowed. Fair use guidelines describe circumstances under which a teacher can use copyrighted materials in face-to-face instruction. The TEACH Act offers similar guidelines for the use of copyrighted materials in distance learning. The evolution of technology is constantly challenging current copyright laws thus causing the laws to continuously change. Regardless of the ultimate rulings by legislators or courts, it will continue to be an educator's professional and legal responsibility to stay aware of changes to the law and to model its application in oclassroom.

Every child in the teacher's charge has a right to privacy. Parents must give permission to share any information about them to which you might be privy as a result of your position as their teacher. Violations of privacy when using technology can take many forms. At one time it was as simple as asking a child to sign a form that would allow individuals to obtain and share the personal information of the child. This conduct became so serious that in October 1998 Congress passed the COPA. COPA protects the child's privacy and sets guidelines for teachers to use in regards to students' privacy.

Once technology is made available to students, it is the obligatgion of educators to ensure that it is used appropriately. Just as educators would not allow questionable or inappropriate printed materials into the classroom, so too must they ensure that such materials available via technology be kept out of the classroom. There must be a code of ethics established where the teacher states the guidelines for using the internet for the students. Students must be assinged a discipline if the code of conduct is violated.

Social
Equity and accessibility of technology are the most pressing and critical of these issues. Families with lower income have less acceess to the internet than do the high income families. This disapportionment is known as a digital divide. The divide does not occur along socioeconomic lines alone, but it also occurs along ethnic, gender, and education lines. More men are technologically savvy than women which may ultimately lead to the gender difference within the digital divide. The digital divide cannot help affecting technology literacy at every level of education. Awareness of the gap in access and the possible inequities along ethic, economic, gender, and eduation lines can help teachers become aware of their students' needs.

Ethical
The Digital Age has also encountered ethical dilemas. One of the most significant of these is freedom of speech and the Internet. The internet is not regulated and contains content that is inappropriate for students. The biggest debate over this regulation is the freedom of speech amendment. Then comes the bebate, who has the responsibility to monitor the content of the information and opinions expressed on the web sites, conferences, and emails. While this controversy continues to rage, it remains the schools' reponsibility to control access on its network to areas of the Internet that are inappropriate for an academic setting.

The next ethical issue is that of privacy. Is it right to monitor the use of the Internet? The controversy arises as the rights of any agency, whether governmental or commercial, to closely monitor and record a peron's personal information or online activities. For educators, this issue is less murky. The primary responsibility is the safety of the students. Because schools and their technologies are public entities, monitoring activities are both appropriate and expected.

Another ethical issue is that of academic dishonesty. Some websites offer "services" to students so that they can hire someone to writed papers for them. Others let students post written assignments or retrieve assignments written by others. Academic dishonesty can be also be caused by students copying and pasting information directly from the Internet and not giving credit to the true authors. To address potential digital dishonesty, teachers and schools should have clearly defined and enforced policies to deal with digital academic dishonesty just as they do for dishonesty of the more traditional sort. There is antiplagiarism software available for teachers to use that compares student's work with well-known author's work and with work posted on the Web. Yet again, it is the teacher's responsibility to ensure that some sort of checks are in place to promote and enforce academic honesty.