Technology Ethics in the Classroom

Due to modern technological advancements, many sectors across the world including education sector have been revolutionized. The use of technology has been incorporated in classrooms hence facilitated learning. The use of technology in classrooms has improved quality of education since everybody can access it without necessary moving to schools. However, since its invention, the use of technology in classrooms has been challenging and associated with numerous unethical issues like plagiarism- copying other people’s works. Nevertheless, despite many negative beliefs and results which have been associated with the use of technology in classrooms, ethical use of technology in classrooms can be easily attained and maintained.

In order to enhance ethical use of technology in classrooms, there are numerous factors which must be placed into consideration. Student’s security when using internet is the key factor towards ethical use of technology in classrooms hence we must give it first priority. In order to protect students from online predators and ensure internet security, all computers in classrooms will be locked and only unlocked with a special password that will be given to teachers alone. This will prevent students to use computers or access internet in absence of teachers (Johnson, 2012). Furthermore, a school being a huge academic institution, we will create our website where all students will be accessing information. Every classroom would be also provided with a website where they will be accessing information, communicate with tutors and their classmates.

In order to prevent intruders to access this website, we will be providing every student with a unique username and password which he or she will be using to log-in in order to access this website. This will help significantly to maintain secrecy in classroom and prevent predators from accessing this website since everybody will be needed to log-in before access any information. In order to ensure that materials covered in classroom are the only ones used, they will be always posted on the classroom website where all students will have access to and removed after a specified period of time (Jones et al., 2010).

In addition, internet security will be implemented by teaching students to question the legitimacy of the websites which they visit. We will provide students with a permit to use certain websites for the purpose of research. Lastly, we will provide students with a set of procedure for which they ought to follow in the situation that something is suitable when it appears on the screen. Lastly, students ought to ensure that they are abiding by copyright laws when using online materials such as text materials, graphics, animations, in addition to other multimedia due to the fact that not all materials on the internet is free for unlimited use

Jones et al. (2010) assert that in order to create proper copyright and student use agreement that could be used in classroom, we will first put into consideration the amount and volume of academic materials and information that we have. The relationship between teachers and students, type of course that students are taking, are among key factors that will be used to create proper copyright and student agreement. For instance, students will not be allowed to share classroom or school materials with other people. They should not be presenting other people’s work as their own.

In order to facilitate ethical use of technology in our classroom, the three ethical practices of technology use that we would implement in our classroom include use of provided and permitted websites alone. This will help us to prevent students from visiting unauthorized websites that are not related to education (Luppicini & Haghi, 2010). This is because some students tend to visit social medial like facebook, twitter, among others instead of concentrating on education. By visiting permitted websites alone, we will have protected them against internet predators as well.

We will encourage students to use materials provided or permitted by school so as to prevent violation of copyrights. This is because if allowed to use materials of their choice, students will still other people’s words and works without the owners’ permission hence making it illegal- plagiarism. Since internet is full information about different subjects and areas, lazy students will be copying other people’s work if allowed to visit unlimited websites and present them as their own. Thus, originality and use of reliable materials provided in the classroom will be of great significance towards attaining ethical us of technology in classroom.

According to Luppicini & Haghi (2010), the third ethical practice that we will use to encourage ethical use of technology in our class is not to try to use school websites or other websites for commercial purposes. This is due to the fact that there are many internet predators and fraudsters pose themselves in different ways. Some come in the name of business companies, among others. Hence, students might be fraud their money by either purchasing goods from online company that actually don’t exist. When we put all these factors into consideration it is apparent that we will be in a good position to improve and maintain ethical use of technology in classrooms hence improving academic performance and quality of education across the world.