What types of ethical concerns do you see emerging with new technology and how might educators address them?
According to George Veletsianos, "Emerging technologies are tools, concepts, innovations, and advancements utilized in diverse educational settings to serve varied education-related purposes" (Veletsianos, 2010, p. 3). Throughout this course we have looked at many different emerging technologies and particular ethical concerns surrounding them. They have ranged from intellectual property to student privacy and everything in between.
As educators, it is critical that we educate ourselves about the possible dilemmas that could arise with each new technology that we bring into our classrooms. It is important that we make decisions that are well informed and truly have our students best interest at heart. In addition to keeping ourselves in the know, it is quite possibly more important that we teach our students about the ethics of emerging technologies.
During week five of this course, I wrote in my personal journey and spoke about the Netflix documentary called “The Social Dilemma”. The film was enlightening and showed me the lack of ethics involved in designing social media today. It is about exploiting the vulnerability of human psychology and turning people into products. There were many top dogs in the industry that had left because they couldn’t continue to operate in that environment. It is paramount that our students understand the consequences of utilizing these technologies.
Barbara Grosz, Higgins Research Professor of Natural Sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), “What we need is for enough students to learn to use ethical thinking during design to make a difference in the world and to start changing the way computing technology company leaders, systems designers, and programmers think about what they’re doing” (Pazzanese, 2020).
As an educator, I want to encourage that type of thinking. I also need to incorporate more digital citizenship lessons into my classroom. I found this Harvard Embedded EthiCS Teaching Lab full of courses that students can be enrolled in which teach them to think about the ethics of computer science and emerging technology. “Students learn to ask not simply ‘Can I build it?’ but rather ‘Should I build it, and if so, how?’” (Pazzanese, 2020).
This seems like the most important thing we can do because if we can change the mindset of the next generation, then we can add morality into the design of future technology.
Examples of ethical problems the Harvard courses are tackling. (Source)
Resources:
Embedded ethics at Harvard: Harvard: Bringing ethical reasoning into the computer science curriculum. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2020, from https://embeddedethics.seas.harvard.edu/module.html
Pazzanese, C. (2020, October 16). Experts consider the ethical implications of new technology. Retrieved November 29, 2020, from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/10/experts-consider-the-ethical-implications-of-new-technology/
Veletsianos, G. (2010). Emerging Technologies in Distance Education. Athabasca University Press.
Nice thoughts. I think you are right on target with the challenge of ethics via technology. The future might help sort some of this out, but truthfully, I think there are too many people in our country that hypocritical when it comes to ethics. These past few years have really brought that out on all sides.
ReplyDeleteNice blog, though.
This post had some mind-altering propositions in it, and as a parent and future educator it scared me to read that social media "is about exploiting the vulnerability of human psychology and turning people into products". While I know social media is a shaper of culture, and turns me into a consumer by exposing me to tailored exploitative advertisements--I sometimes get lost in the fun of it. Thanks for introducing me to the aspirational idea that we can educate and train “Students learn to ask not simply ‘Can I build it?’ but rather ‘Should I build it, and if so, how?’” (Pazzanese, 2020). This, Heather, is the reason you are an educator! I love the forward thinking, and the resources you often find!
ReplyDelete