Ethical Dilemma

I had an interesting conversation with my nephew last week when he raised some concerns about a video he found that I'd posted into our family chat.  It wasn't embarrassing, but merely illustrated the beautiful facials he makes when playing with his legos.  We had an extended conversation, and it concluded with me grudgingly agreeing to consult him each time I wanted to post a video or anything about him online.  I tried to help him see reason, that sometimes, adults want to share funny things they've seen and yet, he didn't like the idea of being laughed at!  (Not sure why!).  But I did have to admit that he had that right, and just because I wanted our family to (lovingly) laugh at his endearing mannerisms did not mean I had the right to do it. 

My wonderful Nephew, used with Permission.

This has led me to think about what ethical dilemmas I face in my classroom.  

One, that I've not really engaged with very well, but have gone along with quickly was making our individual student blogs public.  Not only have I done that, but I've made a central class page in which links to all their blogs are published.  The purpose around this was having the potential to access the world if wanted, and engage with a much wider audience.  My purpose about a central class page was to keep contact with parents and do a bit of promotion of students activities in the classroom.  

However, I think the possible implications of this need to be explored and the approaches to how I minimise the risks needs to be fully engaged in.  I know that the internet can be a dangerous place, but panicking that exploration of the internet may eat me alive is not helpful either.

Possible Risks of a worldwide published blog are...
-Distribution of photos

-Identifying details unknowingly shared

-Lack of context (person reading it doesn’t know someone is special needs, ESOL etc)

-External judgements about content

-Unacceptable comments/feedback/misuse of communication avenues

Netsafe has put out information on how to ensure your school is working towards safe and responsible use in schools (Ministry of Education. (2015). Digital technology - Safe and responsible use in schools. Retrieved from http://www.education.govt.nz/assets/Documents/School/Managing-and-supporting-students/DigitalTechnologySafeAndResponsibleUseInSchs.pdf)

This has 3 major areas in which to guide young people's learning.  They are...

Within our school, we have sporadic success to teach digital citizenship. Some teachers do this better than others. I'm new this year to the digital/chrome book class scene, so I've not been as careful/systematic as I wish I'd been at setting students up for success. There is, however a huge focus on Key Competencies in general, so it's easy to refer back to those ideas when we need to respond to incidents. However, I suspect I'd need to confiscate chromebooks less if I'd been more careful about how I initially get students onto their chromebooks and into their learning tasks. It would be worthwhile if I set up a series of 'classes' or 'workshops' that take you through a process of how to access/use docs and other things online. Even as simple as setting up a background (so that my kids are not incessantly changing their backgrounds and blimmin' profile pictures!) Garr! How much is that to do your learning?!?

Another thing we do is have a 'Kawa of Care'. This is a very well known document that parents, teachers and students must sign in order to get their chromebook in the first place, and until they are able to recite the points that they agree to, they're not allowed to take their chromebooks home. It included physical handling of the device, but also general online safety guidelines- letting their parents know what they're working on, not sharing passwords, using the technology only for learning, reporting unsafe or inappropriate content, etc...

This 'Kawa of Care' leads into the Guide area. We have parent meetings to share the pedagogy/philosophy of chromebooks with parents, and check they're willing to be equal partners in the Kawa of Care. We check they're willing to support, monitor their child at home.

In school, we continue to monitor (albeit sporadically) what children are doing online. I'm sure there's more I could be doing, but I don't know what I can do, or how exactly I can do that. We do have hapara, and I can check their most recent emails, and current screens.

To help them share their learning online via blogs, I often encourage them to email family when they've put up a new post and so they can share it with people they'd like to. As much as I was hoping parents would engage online, comment, view and share their children's blogs, they haven't really done this. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise. But, I can't keep avoiding having a response because I haven't needed one. We need to be continuing to guide our students.

Finally, about Protect. We have very clear expectations when the Kawa of Care is broken. Chromebooks are confiscated until the student finds a way to solve their problem. Some students are not allowed to ever take chromebooks home. In very severe cases of cyber bullying or cyber crime, we've suspended students.

On blogs, I have maintained admin rights to all blogs, and I can easily remove comments or posts that are inappropriate.

We have a few answers to the questions I've got now...but what's coming next, and what the answers those issues will need...well..I can only wait and see...