Week 28: Activity 4: Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice
WHAT: This is an ethical dilemma I have faced recently relating to social media and its use in the school.
I was tasked with creating a Facebook page for the school. This was an outlet to communicate with the school community and share successes experienced by the children while at school. The brief included several pages which were deemed models. I communicated with one of these schools administrator who expressed concern with the way some parents had communicated on the page and some of the language used. Though not obscene these examples were very opinionated and negative towards the school. There was also the fact that images published on the net become accessible to all.
This created doubt that it could be a positive outlet to involve our community and I was considering putting the task in the hard basket. I liaised with neighbouring school who had an established page and directives to use the page. They suggested ways to avoid comment problems using the sites own security tools. Using advice and counsel with senior staff I created a page.
SO WHAT:
The site was set up
The page would be accessible to all and monitored in this by administrators.
Initially the staff were assigned the ability to post.
I reassessed this and assigned minimal administrators who would have access to the page. They would be tasked with posting content and ensuring children were monitored as per the school privacy policies.
Considerations were made in the initial set up with many words and phrases blocked including profanity, names and standard basic sight words. All comments were to be cleared by an administrator before being posted so I felt this alleviated the issue of negative comments. Through careful monitoring I have yet to find negative comments but it is comforting to have this safeguard in place.
Parents sign a release when they enrol and annually to allow use of images involving their children. These are carefully considered when posting any pictures. Having a smaller group of administrators keeps a tight lid on this.
Now what
The solutions set up in step 2 were carefully considered. The problem of human error is countered with having few administrators yet having more than one to ensure nothing unwanted slips through.
The site gives an outlet to celebrate success within the school context. This creates opportunities to identify all children's success and promote this to our wider community showing a commitment to learners.
Ehrich, L. C. , Kimber M., Millwater, J. & Cranston, N. (2011). Ethical dilemmas: a model to understand teacher practice, Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, 17:2, 173-185, DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2011.539794
Education Council. (2017). Our Code Our Standards. Retrieved from: https://educationcouncil.org.nz/sites/default/files/Our%20Code%20Our%20Standards%20web%20booklet%20FINAL.pdf
Rolfe et al.’s (2001) Reflective Model. Retrieved from https://my.cumbria.ac.uk/media/MyCumbria/Documents/ReflectiveModelRolfe.pdf
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