Topic 4: Reflection

And again, it’s time to reflect back on the beginning of this period’s topic: Evaluate the ethical issues raised by the educational use of social media.

I started off doing some research and visiting some of my peers’ blogs to get some idea of how to do it, but I ended up doing it my own way as usual. I saw a lot of students had included ethical issues raised from the use of social media in education and businesses. The amount of students that had this in their blogs got my concerned if I had read the same question as them for this topic. I went back to the module handbook, and decided to only focus on the educational part to get a more in depth answer about that area. We have a quite small word limit so I though it would make more interesting to leave the business part out of my answer so I could spend some time reading, reflecting and writing about that later on.

I think the use and sharing of people’s online information is an ethical issue. Does everyone know who’s got their information and whom they are again selling it to? Businesses like facebook and other social media sites are allowed to store and you’re your information, but do we know to whom? Pictures we have shared on Instagram can be used for so many different purposes, by different companies, which have access to them. Some day we might see a picture we’ve taken for our Instagram account on a bus-poster. Sure, it could be really cool, and a bit weird and freaky I can imagine…

Some of the common ethical issues I have read about for the business use of social media is how people have been dismissed from their work because of something on their social profiles. Another issue for social media in businesses and education is who to befriend and who not to befriend due to unwritten rules about social media interactions. Does this make it unequal and unfair between people? Not everyone knows these ‘norms’, and it could be not the right decision to let them go because of these unwritten rules, after all, they are (in most cases) unwritten.

I also enjoyed reading Jake’s post this week, I was surprised when I saw he had quite a similar example as me on the unfairness social media and technology can bring for education if someone there do not have the access to these tools at home. (Read post here) But for the lucky bunch of us it’s a great thing with the creative learning ways technology brings us, we are privileged!

 

– Kaya Stefferud