Exercise 9: Fitness Assesment

Scenario 3  Ms. Applegate, a Spanish teacher, heard about an interactive poster tool called Glogster. She played around with it and made some really cool electronic posters about different Spanish-speaking countries to use as visuals with her students. Her students liked the posters so much that she decided to have students make some of their own outlining some key features of different Latino holidays. Ms. Applegate discovered in the computer lab while her 8th grade students were creating accounts that Glogster asked students to verify that they were at least 13 years of age or older. This didn’t pose a problem for her 8thgraders but Ms. Applegate panicked because the following period she planned to do the same activity with her 6th graders.

Discuss the possible ethical issues involved.

First off, I'm feel ashamed to admit it has been awhile since I last looked at the ethics in my field. I'm going off of the ethics from American Speech Language Hearing Association, since that is what I am most familiar with. I don't think that their is any issue with ethics with the 8th grade group. However, it may be considered best practice to inform the parents that their child is going to be creating an online account through the site Glogster. With regard to the 6th grade class, I think if she were to proceed with having these students lie and create accounts, even if they are not of age, there would be a violation of ethics.

Determine if the safety or well-being of anyone is in jeopardy.

I don't think the students safety or well-bing would be in jeopardy if she went ahead and had the students lie and check the box that they were 13 or older. However, I think the teacher would be sending her students extremely mixed messages about doing the right thing, acceptable use of technology, and lying when no one is looking.

What advice, strategy or policy would you recommend to individuals or schools based on this scenario?

If teachers want to use Web 2.0 tools with their students it could be helpful for the district or building to create a checklist of things to consider before proceeding with using a particular tool with a class. For example-do parents need to be informed prior to using this tool, which tools have age restrictions, do students need to create individual accounts, and how do you expect students to respond (public vs. private).

Share any real-life incidents or personal connections related to the scenario.

I'm usually not the first person to jump on the technology train, so I can't think of any incidents that I can relate to this scenario right now. Scenario 7: Chernobyl meltdown…

Scenario 7:  Ms. Jansen, a special ed. teacher, has been using Screencasting in her class to post review screencasts of her lessons and study materials. These screencasts have been heavily used by students and she has received glowing emails from parents thanking her for going this extra distance. Ms. Jansen decides it’s time to have her students create their own screencasts. She struggles with how best to post and share their screencasts and decides to use a class YouTube account/channel. Because some students want to do screencasting from home, she provides students with the class YouTube username and password so they can upload their videos from home. Two disasters ensue: 1.) Students post more than just their screencasts including inappropriate random YouTube videos as well as change the privacy settings of the account. 2.) Students post video content of themselves and their peers and the teacher discovers that some of these students have “no photo” stipulations on file in the office. Before Ms. Jansen can even blink, these videos have been shared/linked to Facebook pages and have an assortment of inappropriate comments posted from outside users.

Discuss the possible ethical issues involved.

That is a big unfortunate whoops!!! Was it unethical or just poor judgment to give the students that password to the account. I tend to lean more towards poor judgment.
Determine if the safety or well-being of anyone is in jeopardy.
 
If a student has a no photo policy because a parent doesn't want the other child's parent to know where they are, because of past abuse, that could lead a safety problem. The part about pictures and video being posted to Facebook, and comments from strangers have been added, also could lead jeopardize the safety of students. Particularly if there is information in the pictures/videos about where to locate these students.

What advice, strategy or policy would you recommend to individuals or schools based on this scenario?

Teachers should put restrictions on passwords and students should not be allowed to post anonymously. If a teacher runs into a similiar situation she should make herself available after school for kids to catch up, or be realistic in the amount of time that needs to be allotted to finishing the assignment at school.

Share any real-life incidents or personal connections related to the scenario. 

Again, since I'm new to this I don't have any personal connections yet to this scenario.