Ethical_issues

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 * Ethical issues **

Ownership

 * Who owns the account and materials posted online - the individual teacher, school or student?
 * How long are materials left online once posted? What happens when a student leaves the school? When a teacher leaves the school?

__Current position at Point England School__ Our kawa/protocol is that:
 * Accounts for web 2 apps are used to support learning from our school.
 * Accounts will be registered using the Pt England Domain. i.e the user will be X@ptengland.school.nz. This being the case, the work is owned by the school. There is a sense of dual ownership with the author, but our policy clearly states that the use of of our domain brings responsibilities with it.
 * The Teacher is never the sole account administrator. A member of the management always has dual account admin along with the teacher. This safeguards the school if the teacher leaves or if some other issue arises.

Privacy v publicity, professional vs private

 * Do schools have any responsibility in relation to the way students behave in online social networking sites such as Bebo?
 * Should schools set any expectations on staff in relation to the way they behave in online spaces and networks?

__Russell's viewpoint__ If the pages are able to be easily monitored the kids have made them public rather than private. We have an ethical responsibility to teach our students about the mayhem this can cause for themselves or others. (You would hope parents would be shouldering this responsibility as well) The same is applicable to staff. If the school or cluster has a clearly stated kawa with respect to the damaging effect of certain kinds of social networking and it is made plain that public personae will be monitored from time to time for their impact on self and others and the reputation of family, community and the school, then we have every right to challenge these things appropriately when they occur.

My own personal approach is to go up to a student and say "I've seen your Bebo Page, I don't think your nanna would like it, I'll give you two days to fix it." Every one of those pages has been fixed over night with zero fuss and bother.

I notice an increasing number of staff who are becoming active in social networking environments, not discriminating between their public and private persona. Some are expressing personal opinions or giving personal information in the context of a class or student blog. Once again, there needs to be in school and/or in cluster discussion around the issue of appropriate boundaries between professional and private life.

Keeping it Real

 * How do we help students understand the importance of identity and what personas are appropriate to use in online contexts?

__Russell's viewpoint__ We have a responsibility to teach students and model ourselves the understanding that its OK to have different persona or voice for different register or context, but that this is different from pretending to be someone other than who you are. There are three aspects of ethics here:
 * 1) It is important to match your register/persona to the context you are in or you can be unintentionally insulting or offensive.
 * 2) Identity is precious and important, needs to be protected and if we masquerade as someone different we will ultimately deceive and potentially harm others and ourselves
 * 3) If we falsely represent our own real identity by making ourselves appear better/younger/hotter/skinnier than we are, we are intentionally deceiving and are likely to harm ourselves and others.

Anonymity online

 * When is it appropriate to be anonymous and when is it potentially harmful?

__Russell's viewpoint__ Anonymity is a precious component of democratic society and needs to be protected by providers and the IT industry in general. What Cisco & Yahoo have done in selling their products to China, is deplorable. (ie enabling tracking of supposedly seditious comments by individuals or groups) Our students need to learn that there is a kind of anonymity that's absolutely **not OK**. This is the kind of anonymity in social networking that leads to teen suicide and abjectly miserable people. This ethical issue and its two sides need to be openly and intentionally discussed/debated in the staffroom, the classroom and Home-School Partnership Meetings. The focus question could be; 'When is it Ok to be anonymous?' Its funny how the principles never change and old saws still answer the problem: 'Would you say it in front of Granny?' 'Is it kind, -is it helpful?'

__Other voices to the argument__ There is[| a blog post that explores the impact of anonymity] in an online world on the Gawker blog. The comments add a lot to the discussion. Excuse the ads at the top of the blog!

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