Learning Outcome 5

Learning Outcome 5: Exemplify ethical practices of technology usage

Activity

As the teacher, I will create a private facebook group for parents and students in our class only.  In order to achieve this, I will need to have my own personal account.  Then, I will create the page separate from my personal page.  I will adjust the settings to where all posts are private and only viewed by approved users in the group.  I will also make sure that you must be approved by the administrator to join.  Anyone can request to join and find the group, but they will only be able to view the name of the group and nothing else.  I will also have the setting where I (the teacher) will have to approve any posts by members of the page. 

Once the facebook group is set up, I will send a note home with students for parents to sign.  I require that all parents give permission or we do not have a facebook page.  This is done because as the teacher, I will post pictures and videos of students and do not want to have to filter each learning experience or prevent certain students from participating.  If all parents agree, they will sign the release that states that they will participate in the group.  They are also giving me permission to post videos and pictures of their child in the group.  In the agreement, they also must agree to not sharing posts and agreeing to not share pictures of other people’s children.  Once they have signed this agreement, I will create the page.

I set this system up last year and it worked great. I actually met with my parents to discuss this activity and answer any questions.  They were thrilled with the potential of incorporating this technology into our learning environment.  It also gave me a way to provide a semi-flipped classroom experience.  I was the only teacher in my school utilizing facebook, but personally found it incredibly useful and successful. 

Throughout the school year, I would post pictures and videos of learning experience in the class.  For example, when we studied force and motion, each group was given different objects to create a ramp.  I recorded each group’s race with box cars and posted them to the facebook page.  The parents loved seeing this learning in action.  They also appreciated the vocabulary their children were using and the clear understand they had for this science concept. 

At the end of the day, children would go home and their parents would ask them what they learned at school today.  Often the answer was, “nothing.”  This changed that.  Parents already knew what they had learned.  Instead of asking an open ended question, which is difficult for young children to respond to anyway, they can ask specific questions.  For example, a parent could ask, “Tell me about the blubber experiment today.” This technology gave them a specific insight to what they were learning. 

Another great way to utilize this technology is to create a flipped classroom.  This is when you pre-teach a lesson or provide a re-teach opportunity.  Even in kindergarten, parents struggle to help their child because they fear that are unable to teach their child the way in which their teacher does.  I utilized facebook to post videos to talk to the kids and parents about things we were about to learn in class.  I also used videos to show how to properly complete an assignment or the way in which we are learning a particular objective.

In terms of ethical practices, none of this would have been possible without permission from parents.  Consent is something that should never be assumed.  Written consent is critical in protecting you, the teacher.  There is great liability when dealing with children and technology.  There were a few times when a parent wanted to post something that I did not deem appropriate, but I just did not approve that post and privately messaged the parent.  There was never any confrontation and actually, I had the most active parents in the school because I reached them in a manner that they functioned in too.  

When considering communication with parents, it is important to consider what method of communicating they are already using too.  I actually sent home a weekly paper newsletter and had for years.  I decided in January that I wasn’t going to send one home anymore because I felt that no one was reading it.  So, I stopped sending it home and not one parent noticed. But, they did notice when I did not post on facebook. 

Considering ethics and privacy is critical in all areas of teaching, especially to protect yourself.  Hopefully, all participants will willingly sign the waiver and practice in an ethical manner.  When completed successfully, students (and parents) are engaged, learning happens and everyone wins.