Activity 10 - Ethical Dilemma

To understand what an ethical dilemma is you first need to understand what ethics are and how they relate to our profession.  Google (2015) tells me that ethics are moral principles that govern a person's or group's behaviour.  In the case of teachers we are governed by our own moral fibre but also by the Code of Ethics for Registered Teachers which gives us 4 principles to guide us.  A dilemma therefore would be a situation where our morals are challenged and we must act to rectify or resolve for ourselves or the parties involved.  

Alongside the numerous positives of using social media and online access in a classroom there are always going to be the negatives.  
There is no getting away from the fact that everyone is going to have different views and opinions on every situation and it will impact in some way in classroom life.  The views and opinions parents/caregivers have on letting their children explore the online and digital world, vs the views I have on online learning and what I think is best is sometimes vastly different and for different reasons.

My class is a 1:2 device classroom with individual GAFE accounts.  We have tried to be as future focused as we can be and build up the children for the future they are going to have.  I have tried to make them as aware as I can about how they need to behave when using the internet.  We speak daily about being good digital citizens and what that means and looks like. Some ethical problems that have come up that have required addressing include:

This is an issue that is going to continue to come up in education and life anywhere near online devices.  This is something that we are going to have to evolve with and continue to monitor and solve as the issues arises.  

References:

Google. (n.d.). Retrieved July, 2015, from https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=what%20are%20ethics&es_th=1

www.educationcouncil.org.nz/required/ethics/codeofethics.stm