Activity Five: Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

In this increasing world of digital technology and digital practice the minefield that is the ethical and legal contexts is ever increasing.  I see this as affecting my practice twofold, on one hand you have the increasing use of digital platforms being used as educational tools such as GAFE (Google Apps for Education), facebook, twitter, and instagram to name a few are being used as educational tools; and then on the other hand you have students using an accessing the internet which can lead to such issues as Plagiarism.

In relation to the tools used for educational purposes it is of growing concern for all teachers, an example of this is Facebook.  I have a private facebook page, and as such have often been in the awkward position of having students try to add me as their friend, or private message me.  This has been made an area of increasing difficulty at my school as we communicate via school facebook groups, which are created for subjects, sports, productions and cultural groups.  At the beginning of 2016 we had a visit from PPTA where we discussed professional responsibility and the unethical realm of Facebook and teachers needing to avoid and refuse friend requests from students as accepting these crosses over boundaries that border on inappropriate.  The question then becomes if you do not become friends with students but can still access their pages and can message them via messenger is it delving into a very grey area.  The blurring of privacy of both teacher and student is an uncomfortable area, which has seen many create one profile for private use and another for professional use, I suppose for many, we must use our professional judgment in what we message and post on these pages or messages if they are acceptable or unacceptable.  It is a area of increased blurriness.

The other area which is of an increasing problematic kind is that of Plagiarism.  With students increasingly using digital formats and have access to technology, students sharing and copying work from each other or off the internet has increased significantly.  But the detection of this has also been made easier because of internet checkers.  As this is an area of increasing concern we as educators need to exercise due diligence and actively educate against plagiarism.