Scenario 4: Online safety and ethics

Task:

  • Read the following scenario, the guiding questions and the provided website resources carefully. The guiding questions are designed to help you marshal materials and ideas that will inform your overall final products.
  • Using the resources provided, clearly answer the guiding questions (providing examples when appropriate).
  • Write up your responses in a Microsoft Word document (you should include the scenario and questions).
  • In completing each question you should clearly have identified important concerns and issues related to online safety and ethics in the classroom and at home, as well as identified key strategies and procedures that you can utilize to prevent such issues within your own classrooms.

    • Scenario:

    As part of Sharon's teaching duties, she monitors the school's computer lab for several hours each day. She overhears two girls discussing going to meet someone they encountered in a chat-room. She also overhears two boys composing a nasty e-mail they plan to send anonymously. When she confronts the boys about it, they say that no-one will be able to tell who sent the e-mail so they won't get in trouble. She asks if they would say the same things in person as they would in an e-mail and they say they would not, but it isn't the same thing since it is online.

    Questions:

    1. Based on the scenario above and the resources below, what issues do teachers need to be aware of and address with students regarding the risks of using the Internet at school and at home?
    2. What should Sharon tell the two girls about meeting someone in real life that they first encountered online?
    3. How can Sharon explain to the boys that the faceless nature of the Internet does not relieve them of their responsibility to act in an ethical manner?

    Teachers need to be aware and make students aware that the world is not a safe place. People can use the anonymity and power of the internet to manipulate others, abuse others, get "close" enough to others to take advantage of them, steal from others, dupe young naïve users, and generally engage in activities that are not in the best interest of those who are the target of their actions. Because of this all persons using the internet (and the bus system, and train system…) must take steps to secure their own safety and become knowledgeable about the common ways in which their safety might be put in jeopardy. Unfortunately they must also abandon naïveté and innocence in order to develop a sense of self-protection. On the opposite site of the coin, for every person ever abused over the internet there was an abuser. Everyone who uses the internet is a potential abuser. We will encounter situations that test our moral and ethical mettle. Send an "anonymous" email to an ex-friend? Post unflattering pictures of an ex-girlfriend? Deceive someone into entering a credit card number? The list goes on. When our mettle fails such tests, someone will likely suffer as a consequence.

    The teacher should tell the girls that they are putting themselves into serious jeopardy by meeting with someone they met online without proper (safe) accompaniment (parents). If they insist that there is nothing to worry about the teacher should show the girls articles on net-assisted abduction, rape, and homicide. This might change their mind. If this didn't work, I would contact the parents involved, preferring to the girls safety to their "friendship." Anyone who legitimately wanted to meet them would have no qualms with arranging a respectable, safe and healthy public meeting with friends and family present.

    Explaining ethics is difficult. Explaining ethics to teenage boys is a healthy challenge. In Sharon's position I would start by asking the boys how they might feel if the situation were reversed. This tactic failing I would explain that it is a sign of cowardice and weakness not to assume responsibility for one's actions. I would continue by having them imagine if their act (malicious email) were multiplied 1,000-fold, or 1,000,000-fold, would the world be a better place? Failing all attempts to appeal to their better nature, their appreciation for others and their abstract reasoning I would appeal to their own self-interest (not an "ethical" solution) and inform them that all emails are traceable. All information is stored in some form, and just like very talented computer virus makers, they too can be "hunted" down and held responsible for their actions by force if they won't be by choice. I would try not to alienate them and I would try not to threaten them, but to have them make their own mistakes and learn from them.