Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice
Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice
I’ve been very lucky not to have been aware of many serious breaches of ethical behaviour linked to digital or online behaviour. One that did make me ponder on what to do and then how to do it occured about ten years ago and reflecting back makes me realise that I set a good tone for future professional behaviour.Following Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model
WHAT?
When the web first starting getting “fast”, Peer to Peer file sharing started to become a thing. Napster, Limewire etc allowed the more savvy (naughty) to have anything they wanted off the net for free. The lure of this enticed many, myself included. It was easy to search a song, album, movie, application and have it on your computer within an hour or two.
I had a teaching colleague who was hooked. Where things got tricky was that it became apparent that he was sharing and swapping these downloaded files with a number of his students. They would bring in what they had downloaded and he would do the same and at lunchtime they would copy what they wanted from each other. I didn’t know about this situation until I overheard a student conversation.
I had multiple roles in this situation 1) ICT Coordinator, 2) Professional NZ Teacher, 3) Friend to a colleague. I didn’t feel comfortable with this breach of professional standards I felt this teacher had taken and was sure that this would come back to hurt him professionally.
The first action I took was as a friend. I went to the teacher and informed them of what I had heard and that it seemed to be common knowledge in the student body. I knew it to be hypocritical of me to be discussing the ethics of the particular behaviour but they needed to be made aware of the consequences of their actions as a professional employee. I received the reaction I thought I might get from this person. “It’ll be right”, “it’s only a few songs and the occasional movie” “alright I’ll stop doing it”.
As it turns out, this teacher continued with this behaviour, abet much more discreetly and I did not know until they left the employment of our school.
SO WHAT?
In my mind at the time I was thinking:
- This could have easily been me
- I did the right thing by approaching them directly as a friend first
- What else was going on at the school that would be deemed unprofessional or illegal?
- Should I inform Senior Management?
NOW WHAT?
Now that I have been in the role of ICT coordinator for a long time and to keep improving, I understand the importance of providing the Digital Device users in our school with very clear guidelines about their ethical, legal and moral use at our school. I can not assume that every staff member is fully aware of their obligations, not only at school and in their daily interactions with the kids but in their personal use of the school supplied equipment. We have created “Fair Use” Contracts for staff which explicitly state the rules around online behaviour and acceptable personal use. This has come from re-working examples from other school, Ministry and staff meetings where we have added our own take on what is acceptable. For this action to be successful myself and the SLT have to be very upfront, with young staff in particular, about the situation. Many staff have taken to leaving their BOT supplied laptop at school as most of what we do is synced online.
For myself personally I stopped the Peer-2-Peer downloading of files and have a much better understanding of the Creative Commons structure for finding resources online.
reference:
Adapted from: Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
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I found this really interesting Alister, and it reminded me of when I was at teachers college. I had a movie about time travel on my desktop, which my girlfriend had just given me. It was a movie made from a really popular book. We were discussing books and movies in a small tutorial group with our lecturer one day and she mentioned she loved the book which this movie was based on. Our tutorial group was small and it was nearing the end of the year, so we were all very familiar with each other.
ReplyDeleteWithout thinking, I offered to download the movie onto a pen drive and give it to her to upload so she could watch it at home. Our lecturer was a very professional person, and I saw her look excited and then catch herself, and she surprised me by saying 'no, I can't do that as it is not within the copyright laws'. She did not make me feel bad, just refused to break the law. This had such a strong affect on me that I have always thought of it when having to deal with downloaded songs, and movies which pop up on some students google drives when I am teaching them. I always reiterate that these files are contraband and that if found they would contravene the students 'computer agreement' which states that they will not have these files or visit illegal movie websites on school devices, or during school time. I am glad I had this early example to go with early on or I may not have taken such a straight line. Modelling and integrity is so important, as Fenstermacher, in Erich (2004) states ' the teacher's conduct in all ways and at all times is a profoundly moral matter...teaching is a profoundly moral activity'. Thanks for sharing.REFERENCES
Teacher Education and Mentoring Program. (2012). Ethical and Professional Dilemmas for Educators: Facilitator’s Guide: Understanding the Code of Professional Responsibility for Educators. Connecticut, US: Author. Retrieved from https://www.ctteam.org/df/resources/Module5_Manual.pdf
Cranston, N., Ehrich, L. C. & Kimber, M. P. (2004). Towards an understanding of Ethical Dilemmas Faced by School Leaders. Principia, Journal of the Queensland Secondary Principals' Association, 1, pp. 1-3. Retrieved from: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/732/2/Ethical_Dilemmas.pdf
Ehrich, L. C. , Kimber M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: a model to understand teacher practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 17:2, 173-185, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794
Thank you for responding. I'm interested in your second reference article - was it one of the Mindlab suggestions?
ReplyDeleteFile sharing is so easy now days. So to stay inside the rules is difficult. It's a bit like speeding, we know it's against the law but we all do it just a little bit every now and then.
Hi Alister, thanks for the post. It has definitely made me think about some of my own practices and whether I should continue or modify my behaviour.
ReplyDeleteI have two areas I want to illustrate, the use of Youtube in the classroom and the sharing of resources between different schools. I’ll use Rolfe et al.’s (2001) reflective model as well.
WHAT?
So, as a teacher I use Youtube quite a lot to show examples of Physics in the real world or to show snippits of explanations produced for TV programs. There are also loads of university lectures and resources such as the Khan Academy videos [hosted by Youtube]. A usual practice is for me to use some sort of downloader to obtain a local copy of the video file so that it will be available in the future. This avoids the problem of the video not being available ‘live’ on-line for future classes. Over the years I have built up quite a library!
When it comes to sharing resources that I have developed myself such as notes and worksheets I have no problem at all sending a copy to colleagues at other schools. I don’t use any images from the web unless I checked for Creative Commons attribution (Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand, 2018) first, otherwise I draw my own diagrams
SO WHAT?
With the use of Youtube I checked the Netsafe site (Netsafe NZ, 2015) and had a hunt around for the relevant info. The first thing that I found was that live streaming content to a class full of students poses no problems with copyright [although I’m sure that some content didn’t have permission to be on Youtube in the first place!] However, I’m pretty sure that I’m not supposed to be downloading content at all unless I can show it’s licensed for re-use – OOPS! – Ring the Police – Quick…
My file-sharing of materials with other teachers is also problematic as our Board has no policy about Creative Commons. Any material I develop at school belongs to the Board [although they probably wouldn’t be too keen on reading Physics!] and I should ask them EVERY TIME I share materials… What the?
NOW WHAT?
With my downloading of Youtube videos I should probably stop doing it, easy enough. But what do I do about the files I already have? Most of them I have kept because they’re useful to my teaching. Deleting them will cause me a lot of extra work to find new ‘live’ resources. If I keep the files who’s going to find out anyway? All teachers do it…! Don’t they?
The sharing resources problem is easier to resolve. The Board needs to develop a Policy that includes a standard Creative Commons license such as
ATTRIBUTION-NONCOMMERCIAL-SHAREALIKE
Where others can remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Then teachers can work under this general umbrella license when sharing with other schools. Of course, specific boards may not wish to share with other schools if they are in a highly competitive environment – another can of worms…
References
Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand. (2018). Creative Commons in Schools. Retrieved April 1, 2018, from https://creativecommons.org.nz/ccinschools/
Netsafe NZ. (2015). Can I use Youtube in my classroom. Retrieved April 1, 2018, from https://www.netsafe.org.nz/can-i-use-youtube-in-my-classroom/
Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D., Jasper, M. (2001) Critical reflection in nursing and the helping professions: a user’s guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.