EPS 415: Information Technology & Ethics

Oh My!, Oh, No!, Really? Ah, Ha!, Hmm…Go to your blog and post a reaction to the material and concepts you learned in this course. You might share something you learned that surprised you, that pushed your thinking, or that forced you to question an existing belief, or you might share a new belief/understanding that you are still questioning.

The one thing that I learned that really surprised me in this course was that people do in fact cheat more when using the Internet versus when they do work using references from the print medium (Baruchson-Arbib & Yaari, 2004). My assumption was that this understanding we hear about in the news or read about in the papers was just a problem of perception and that technology had tainted the popular opinion on the subject. Since most people who aren’t into technology tend to believe that technology is bad or makes things worse, I thought this perception that people were cheating, in essence, because of technology was more of the same. In two studies I reviewed during the class, I found that people basically thought that cheating while using the internet was okay (Baruchson-Arbib & Yaari, 2004). This was a shocking discovery, but one that I think will help to temper my opinions on how to curb cheating in the future when I’m a teacher (i.e. when I grow up).

The other thing I found out in this class that supported another assumption of mine is that people tend to want to cheat because of the pressures they are under to succeed in their school work (Szabo & Underwood, 2004). I always assumed that people wanted to cheat more nowadays than back in the day, and that that was the reason people actually go to use technology to cheat so much. While I didn’t find any research that directly correlated those two things, I was not able to find anything that disproved it. Perhaps I can study that aspect of why people cheat later in my career in education.

References

Learning involves new forms of technological literacy. Is technology changing so quickly that only a trained techie can keep up? Is the new literacy, the continually emerging technology, creating an illiterate society (those of us who cannot use a Treo)? Are we going to have two classes of learners, those who can and those who can’t deal with the technology?

Is technology changing so quickly that only a trained techie can keep up? Yes. The good news is that just about anyone can become techie enough to get by. Put it this way, if the average person put a little effort into learning technology, say the same amount they put into preparing for the Superbowl or knowing all kinds of statistics about their favorite basketball or baseball team, I think they could do it. The one factor that keeps people behind on technology is the lack of interest. Unfortunately that approach is losing its appeal as a viable option for people because technology is seeping into just about every aspect of our lives; work, school, church, the hospital, etc.

On the second question as to whether or not I think the new technology is creating a new category of illiterate people? Yes I believe it is. Those who choose to remain unversed in the basics of technology will find themselves in a real disadvantage as more and more businesses and professions pick up on the use of technology tools to get work done. For those who have trouble with technology, primarily because they have never had to use it professionally, or chose to stay away from it, there are steps that can be taken to become acquainted with and to keep up with new technologies as they appear:

1. Step 1

   

   netbook computers

   Spend more time on the internet because it is the best source of information. Parents need to read and find out the latest gadgets that most teenagers are using today. If you hear something new from other people or your own kids, make time to search and read about it on the internet. This will help you stay on top of the latest trend.

2. Step 2

   

   internet

   Get the gadgets that your kids are asking you to buy for them. Better yet, buy the gadgets first and try it for yourself so you’ll know if it’s good or bad for teenagers. There is no better way to learn how a gadget like iPhone works unless you use them.

3. Step 3

   

   social networking site

   Find out the parental security feature of a certain gadget like computer or netbook before you let your teenager use it. Unless you are pretty much familiar on how to monitor or control the activities of your teens, don’t let them use it yet. This goes with access to online social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace.

4. Step 4

   

   iPod Nano

   Subscribe to magazines that feature new technologies so you will become aware of the latest trend even before it lands on your teen’s hands. It is a great way to keep up to the fast growing technology. Parents who keep up with their kids in terms of technology can be another form of bonding, aside from keeping your kids safe.

   By keeping up with technology, parents can better oversee kids especially teenagers from getting into trouble. It is also another way to make a bond with teenagers nowadays. (harrisdy, n.d.)

Do I think that we will have two types of learners; those who can and those who cannot deal with technologies productively? Yes, and I think that’s happening now. While I’m sure that many schools are trying to upgrade their curriculum to incorporate more technology and computer literacy in the preparatory stages of students’ education, to date studies show that elementary schools only provide these kids with between 10 and 60 minutes of information technology access per week (Kaminski, Seel, & Cullen, 2003). This translates to students getting the majority of their computer literacy from home, which directly translates into an increasing gap in the digital divide for computer literacy amongst students who are the “haves” versus those who are the “have nots”. This lack of computer literacy in some students seriously impairs their ability to succeed at the academic pursuits (Kaminski, Seel, & Cullen, 2003). So, as we see, being into computers and technology is quickly changing from a situation where people choose to use technology out a want, but where people must use technology because they need to use it to be successful. I just hope that people are willing to bone up on technology before it is too late for them.

References

You may already have an online identity in a social network aside from the network for this course—in Facebook, MySpace, or something similar. If you do, please write a few paragraphs about the experience of creating and maintaining an online identity for yourself. Describe the kind of picture you put up. How did you set your privacy controls? What applications have you used? Why?

Creating an online identify on the social network Facebook has been a net-positive experience for me. While maintaining my virtual presence can at times be a lot of work–work I’m usually not willing to do, which leaves my profile abandoned for months on end, I find that it pays off in social dividends. Just recently I’ve connected with some people I went to the Navy with several years ago. The feeling of reconnecting with a person that was a good friend during a very trying time is priceless. It’s like having a priceless treasure call you up on the phone one day and, after the discussion, texting you the gps coordinates to come pick it up.

When I first setup my Facebook page, I don’t believe that I actually put in an image of myself. It was a while ago and I didn’t have a digital camera I could use to do it, so I just didn’t. I did put some time into adding the college I was going to at the time, as well as some details about my hobbies and interests. I didn’t really put a lot of working into customizing my site, because I was in college and working full time, so the time that would have been spent updating this went into completing homework, or playing video games–I play video games enough be mentioned here in the “why I don’t have enough time to manage my Eacebook identity properly” discussion.

The picture I have up right now, is one that I took from my iphone when I first got it and installed the Facebook app. I was just looking down into the camera while at work, and took the picture. I wish I could have thought of something more awesome to do, but I’m just not super excited about managing this online profile. I may update it again in a year or so to something funny when I have more time on my hands, but for now I think it’ll have to do.

My privacy settings are currently setup so that I don’t get any messages from any of the popular applications on the site (e.g. mafia wars, farmville, youville, etcville, etc. (etcville was a joke. haha!)). I also make sure that I don’t have any subscriptions to any quizzes that are circulating around on the site. I don’t like the idea of me giving a quiz maker access to my profile and the profiles of my friends in order to take a quiz that literally means nothing to me. However, I don’t think I have my privacy settings set to where only my friends can see my profile and stuff. Though, the fact that I don’t know for sure is a direct result of me not really putting much time into it.

While I don’t use any applications per se from Facebook, I do use three pieces of the site’s functionality; the chat feature, the news feed view of all of my friends’ activity and the inbox. These three tools are essential for me to keep up with current events and how my peeps (i.e. friends, family and colleagues) are doing.

What does an Internet filter do? Do libraries have to install them? Do schools? Name any laws that are related to Internet filters.

Internet filters are hardware and software devices and applications that are installed on individual computers, as well as on computer networks to prevent the users of the Internet and any other networked computer services the system administrators, along with the management team of the organization–educational or otherwise, from using. In education, this usually applies to children who can be harmed by viewing objectionable materials (Cook-Woodbury, 2003).

Yes, at least in Illinois, libraries “must have a technology protection measure to prevent the display on a public computer of any visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or harmful to minors” (http://www.safelibraries.org/statecipalaws.htm). While there is no federal Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA)–there is the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) that came up with guidelines for public institutions to protect children, however it didn’t mandate that filtering be used–there are state and local versions (e.g. Illinois CIPA laws) that provide schools and libraries with written mandates for the level of security and filtering they must provide to protect children using computer resources (Cook-Woodbury, 2003).

Here are a few current laws going through the Illinois State Legislature that involve filtering technologies, also known as parental controls:

HB6247 – this bill creates the Online child safety act and makes each Internet service provider responsible for providing parents with parental controls, or filtering tools to control the access their children have to sites and resources online (http://capwiz.com/ala/il/issues/bills/?bill=14679181).

HB6242 – this bill creates the Social Networking Websites Access Restriction Act and makes each social network responsible for keeping databases or filtering software that allows parents of children to give written permission, or not, for their children to be able to access these services. For instance, if a minor signed up for Facebook, it would be Facebook’s responsibility to contact the parent so that they can grant permission for the child to use that service. If the child does not get her parents’ consent, Facebook would have to block access to its services from that child (http://capwiz.com/ala/il/issues/bills/?bill=14679136).

Explain the pros and cons of internet filters. What is your opinion of these filters? Support your opinion with logical reasoning.

I think that while I don’t personally install filters at my home on any of my computers–outside of spam filters, firewalls and virus protection to prevent general calamity with my network, I think that there is a time and place for filters. That place being when young children are involved. Now, I don’t think that kids are totally unable to handle anything that’s out there on the web, I just think that subjects are as segregated as they are in realspace on the Internet. For instance, if a person wanted to get access to pornography in realspace, they would have to drive to a far away place off of a high way and be carded as well as considered carefully by the store owner before they were able to get access to those materials. On the Internet, with so many free porn sites out there, there is basically no age verification going on. The only age verification I see sometimes is where they simply ask what your date of birth is. So, I am for filtering in public places that only serve children.

As for libraries, I think that children should be given certain log ins on the computers that enabled the filtering software. For instance, when a student submits their id for access to lab time, the librarian can log the student in as a kiddie account and that student would be limited. On the other hand, when an adult (state issued id required) asked for lab time, that same librarian can log that adult in with an adult account with no filtering enabled. I’m pretty sure the technology exists out there today to enable this functionality.

Do filters cause students to miss out on appropriate sources when looking for information? Yes. Does the omission of a few sites among millions of other sources cause irreparable harm to a child’s educational pursuits? I don’t really think so.

So, basically, I’m for filtering for some, and against filtering for others.

References

In the Tillman article, the author describes “my key indicators of quality (my checklist).” List and describe the points in that checklist, and then describe the indicators of quality that are most important to you. What do you look for when evaluating quality? Why are those indicators most important to you?

Tillman (2003) provides a great list to use when verifying the quality of materials found on the Internet. I actually think that it is a good list that can be used to not only verify the quality of data retrieved from the net, but also used to verify the website for security purposes. For instance, when an email shows up in my email inbox claiming to be from either my bank or another reputable source, I run through a modified version of the list she provided.

In order to fully use Tillman’s list of key quality indicators, it is important to elaborate on how the items on the list will add value to a person looking for information on a particular website. The key indicators of quality are:

• ease of finding out the scope and criteria for inclusion that lets me see whether there is a match with my needs – this step should be done to verify that the information provided on the site is correct for the context you intend to use it for in your research. For instance, if a site purports to being an official resource for a historical event, but later you find out that it is a parody site, the information included in the site, and therefore your project where you included the information are useless to you. Unless you’re writing a comedy skit for a fiction writing class.
• ease of identifying
  • the authority of the authors – in general, it is important to understand the accreditation or experience the author brings to the subject they are writing about. You’ll want to know that the author is a professor of a well-known university and not a teenager with an opinion about a subject that they are writing about on their personal website.
  • the currency – it is important to check to see if a website is regularly updated and curated for data. If a site isn’t updated, it can have incorrect or even false information in it. For instance, if you were doing a research paper about the President of the United States that was out of date for a few years, it will be possible to use the wrong president in your paper. So, you want to see that the page isn’t obsolete before you rely on the website or resource for information.
  • the last update – this kind of follows the previous post, but if you are using a website that covers a quickly moving technological subject, you’ll want to include the best, most up-to-date information in your research.
  • what was updated – this has to do with looking at the history of the website to determine the appropriateness of the site, author or organization to give you information about a subject. For instance, if you look at the history of a website and it started off as a comedy or porn website and has the same organization or individuals updating the site, you may have some problems with the validity of the data.
• stability of information
  • can I rely on it staying there? – If a site updates regularly to completely different information or there are a great deal of corrections or omissions to the website over time, this may indicate that the editors of the site don’t have a really good editing process. You want to make sure that the information you present in your work is still there when a professor or supervisor checks up on your references for additional study.
• ease of use in terms of both convenience or organization and speed of connection – individuals need to be able to either use the website and its information in various platforms, browsers and computer hardware. Also, once they are on the site, people need to be able to actually find the information they are looking for. Site navigation should be clear and the site should be supported by a database and search functionality. At the very least, care should be taken to register the site with Google so that people can at least have the site show up in search results. (Tillman, 2003)

Name three steps that web users can take to confirm information that they find online.

When I personally look for quality in a web resource, I check the following things:

• the top level domain name – If I’m looking for some serious research and I find a site that looks legit, but has the URL www.reasonablesite.us or .tv, I will be skeptical about the information on the site. I look for sites that end in .edu, .gov, .com as primary sites to get information from.
• the organization name the author either works for or is associated with – I look into the author’s bio to see what they do for a living and if that is connected in a meaningful way to the information they are providing on the site, which I am relying on. For example, if I’m looking up learning theory for a grad school essay and I find an article written on the personal website of a teenager who only has experience working at The Gap, then I am certainly going to pass up that article as a reference.
• the length of the article – It’s easy for an author to write on and on about a subject, but when that happens, it may be difficult for me to actually separate out the facts from the author’s bias. When articles are written in a concise way with bias clearly defined, I can come away from the article with the right information and very little of the fluff/opinion.

References

Search the internet to find at least two methods that students have used to cheat in online courses. You may want to use a search phrase like “online education cheating” (as you will quickly learn if you look for “online cheating”).

In my search for two methods of cheating, I found that there are several ways for students to cheat nowadays that they would not have had access to 15 years ago. It truly is a brave new world for cheating and cheating prevention that all teachers and educational institutions have to deal with. One study suggests that in the year 2000, “44% of high schoolers admitted to cheating at least twice [that] year. And since cheaters are likely to cheat on a survey, we know that these figures significantly understate the problem” (Josephson, as cited in Lathrop, Foss, & Foss, 2000, p. 1). Lathrop et al. (2000) suggest that the main reasons so many students cheat are:

1. In the online setting, with so much information technology available to students, cheating is easy.
2. Very few people who cheat are actually caught–less than 10%.
3. If students are actually caught, the punishment is usually not commensurate with their offense, whether it be plagiarism, or outright cheating.

The first method I found online for cheating is where students pre-load formulas, examples and other information on their screens, or in palm sized devices and calculators before taking tests–the latter of which would be used during proctored exams and the former would be used in home office setups. This way they come up with new high tech cheat sheets specifically tailored to bump up their assessment scores (Lathrop et al., 2000).

The second method I found online for cheating is where students take assessments and simply share the questions, or the questions and answers with other members of the class. This method can be useful to cheating students, especially when tests are not proctored and can be taken asynchronously at different times by the students (http://ezinearticles.com/?Online-Education—A-Haven-For-Cheating?&id=1779932)

Describe how students use these methods and how we can prevent cheating. What are your thoughts on the best way to prevent cheating?

To prevent these two methods of cheating, I believe instructional designers in the online setting should use a mix of tools for assessing a student’s learning and competency in the subject. All too often, it seems that instructors are being caught by cheaters because they are using old methods of assessment that don’t translate very well into the online format. For instance, multiple choice exams, or specifically, one multiple choice exam with the same questions for every student in the class. If this teacher were to put in a mix of short answer and essay questions, the students would have a much harder time basically turning in an anonymous, but correct test. Also, teachers can write enough questions for an exam, and then randomize them for each test taker, “to ensure a suitable ratio between [the] number of questions and number of students [exists], in order to minimize the chances that two students will receive the same questions” (http://ezinearticles.com/?Online-Education—A-Haven-For-Cheating?&id=1779932).

Another tool instructional designers can use to prevent cheating in online education is to incorporate new educational methods for assessment into their course designs that include “problem-based learning, case-based learning, competency-based learning, project-based learning and so forth” (Jochems, van Merrienboer, & Koper, 2003, p. 3-4). For example, my wife took an evolution class last semester–The Biology of Evolution–and the teacher incorporated synchronous phone discussions into the assessment regime for establishing my wife’s competency in the subject. Basically, in my opinion, it would be impossible for my wife, or any student, to have faked that kind of assessment.

To improve on the synchronous model of assessment, which I believe is the best way to stop some or all cheating in online education, I think that students should use some kind of 2 or 3 part authentication to log into tests. For instance, for 2 part authentication, the student would use something they know, a password, along with something they have, a login security key, or something they are, a fingerprint scanner (i.e. biometrics (http://citm.utdallas.edu/research/Publications/white_papers_source/Biometrics.pdf)) to log into an exam, or synchronous session, to prove that they are who they claim to be when they take the exam.

References:

How can we test a website to be sure it is accessible to handicapped students? What do we look for? Are there tools we can use to check a website?

The first thing a site designer should do is consider their audience. I remember during this week’s discussion, the general consensus was that for some kinds of sites, a small minority of users would be disabled. That said, it is important for the designer to fully explore the likelihood that their products or presentations would be consumed by Americans with disabilities. When the risk assessment is complete, the designer can review already published standards for making sites accessible–in this case we’re talking about a site designer for an educational institution–to handicapped clients. Some of the things the designer can do to ensure his site is accessible to handicapped clients are:

1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content.
2. Don’t rely on color alone.
3. Use markup and style sheets and do so properly.
4. Clarify natural language usage.
5. Create tables that transform gracefully.
6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/).

With the complexity of websites and their functionality constantly growing, it may become difficult for a development to keep up with accessibility standards that are also ever-changing. In order to keep their sites accessible, they can use automated tools that will go through their sites and give them reports of what needs to be tweaked for accessibility, usability and functionality (http://www.powermapper.com/products/sortsite/ads/acc-accessibility-testing.htm?gclid=CMTd0_vLvqACFctI5wodwA41UA). While some tools require subscriptions or licensing, others can be used for free (http://wave.webaim.org/), and can give the designer enough information to keep the site current with accessibility and usability standards.

As a teacher, how would you evaluate a website that you wanted to use for a class?

The first thing I would do before adding a website to the list of assignments for a class, is go to it and see how difficult it is for me to get to the content required to complete the objectives of the lesson. After I was sure that content existed on the site, I would then try to verify that the site was not malicious or contain any viruses or spyware to give to unsuspecting users. For this I’d check the browser address bar to see if there were any red alerts or warnings. After this step, I would determine if the material is appropriate for students of the age group I’m teaching. Next I would check the site for additional technology requirements the students need to participate in the lesson (e.g. adobe flash update, Apple QuickTime, 3d graphics card for simulations, etc.) and add those to the course syllabus/technology requirements. Lastly–especially if I was informed any particular student disabilities or Individualized Education Plans (IEP) (http://kidshealth.org/parent/growth/learning/iep.html), I would test the site with automated accessibility and usability tools to find out the problems and prepare strategies or supplemental readings, recordings, etc. to fill in the gaps for disabled students.

Do you agree with the provisions that are included in the code and the way in which they are phrased?

Yes, I agree with the provisions that are included in the code and the way they are phrased. Since I’ve never personally been a teacher before, I focused my attention on principle I, which ensures that the teacher understands their responsibility to the students they will interact with for the duration of their careers (i.e. the purpose of their existence) (National Education Association, n.d.). This principle captures the my ideal understanding of a teacher’s role in educating a student. While I have never been a teacher in any official capacity, I have mentored people in my job and taught them how to do work of a very complex nature. My approach, is to always try to get the student’s trust and to keep them motivated to learn, even when they are missing prerequisite skills to do a task. I also tend to put an emphasis on what the student actually knows before we move onto another task or subject because I feel that I haven’t done my job unless they walk away from our training session knowing how to do what they need to do. All of these things are captured by the first principle.

Had you ever read a “teacher’s code of ethics” before? Is there anything missing?

While I have never read a teacher’s code of ethics before, I think that, since we’re dealing primarily with online education–or even offline education in 2010 that probably wouldn’t be covered by a document written in 1975–there are some specific things that could be added to it. Perhaps a section on teachers continuing to develop skills “during their whole professional life-cycle” (Terhart, 1998, p. 438), skills (e.g. computers, internet, facebook 101, laptops are not evil in classrooms 201, etc.) that may assist them to “reach” students throughout their entire career.

Apply one of the ethics situations to your own work environment.

While I don’t teach at work, I think that I can speak to the principle “Shall not intentionally expose the student to embarrassment or disparagement” (National Education Association, n.d.). I had this boss that is such a showboat that he can’t stand not making others look bad so that he somehow looks better. Of course, he could just be really good at his job to look better than other people, but I digress. He asked me to write and give a presentation about using Structured Query Language (SQL) for some of the other team members. When I was giving the presentation, he noticed that I had the acronym incorrect on the screen. Now, none of the people that didn’t know anything about SQL I was teaching said anything, but he actually interrupted me in the middle of speaking and called-out that I had the word wrong. It was quite embarrassing and really didn’t add to either my learning to present information or their learning of the information.

It is important that teachers don’t purposely embarrass students because that can cause them to shut-down and not learn anything in class. I, for one, did not in that situation. To this day, I’m still pretty jittery when I give presentations to people.

Given that this course is about online teaching, what are issues that might be included in a code of ethics for online teachers?

I think that teachers should have some ethics related to student privacy. While I understand that there are situations where students should be outed for their myspace or facebook stuff when they are doing things like breaking the law (naked pictures of themselves when under-age), but other than that, there should be some rules for teachers to follow that will help negotiate web 2.0 and web 3.0 applications. After all, like with the NEA code of ethics, these things were all written like 15-30 years ago!

References:

National Education Association. (n.d.). NEA – Code of Ethics. Retrieved March 11, 2010, from http://www.nea.org/home/30442.htm

Terhart, E. (1998). Formalised codes of ethics for teachers: Between professional autonomy and administrative control. European Journal of Education, 33(4), 433 – 445.