T4: Ethical Issues raised by Educational use of Social Media

Focusing on making social media an effective and efficient method in learning and teaching come with few concerns regarding its use in their practise. I consider cyberbullying and Interllectual property in social media to be the most significant issues raised by educational use of social media.

The balance between freedom of speech and censorship: cyberbullying occurs when cyber-disinhibition which comes with being online, especially when people are unknown to one another. There is a need to understand more about the reasons why people engage in such behaviour in order to address the issue. Majority of the cases have a background of previous cyberbullying being the reason why students are reticent to participate in social media- which can expose them to renewed harassement or cyberstalking. Although this goes against to the need for psedonymity, these problems can be limited by removing anonymity.  

Interllectual property in social media is another major ethical issue where there is a lack of awareness of who owns material placed in social media and of how to protect the IP of students who use it. Perhaps it isn’t as important as it used to be because now we are more accepting of the concept that ideas are free, there is the precedence of shareware within online interactions and lessons to be learned from creative commons. Generall, it’s those who are more reticent to share ideas who tend to be the weaker ones. Accrediting ideas in social media is also difficult and accreditation can become seperated from content as posts/messages which are complied or shared however, people are more forgiving of accidential misuse and inadverternt plagiarism in social media than in academic journals and books.

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Many do feel that they can be themselves when online because thier sense of self is at odds with their physical form, or because their immediate peer group cannot accept their true nature which means that their online identity is authentic, and different from their offline one. I think we should not enforce particular requirements on users, since it is impossible to anticipate what issues they may have when they perform in a particular way online: not using thier real names or actual images of themselves etc.

A growing awareness and confidence with ethical issues around social media use is the highlight of this weeks’ blog. Educators have a good understanding of what the problems and challenges are, but there is a lack of progress towards solutions. Students as well as staff need guidance, codes of conduct, protection for the use of social media in education to grow, understanding will increase with engagement.

I think a code of conduct should respect the right of the individual to present themselves in a way they see fit, expressing their personal viewpoints whilst managing to be sensitive to the open nature of such communication as well as behaving in a lawful/respectful manner towards others.

Few weeks prior to the Topic 4 assignment, I saw a forum taken place at the OISE, NEXUS Lounge in University of Toronto which discussed the balance between the promise and perils of the new technologies – with a particular emphasis on social media.

At the same time, there is a growing concern among many that these new media forms loosen the safeguards that teachers traditionally exert over education. We are seeing a new set of issues for educators and students, including cyber bullying, invasion of privacy, and concerns about safety, shortened attention spans, and a lack of face-to-face social skills.

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