Digital Dilemmas: How Elementary Preservice Teachers Reason about Students' Appropriate Computer and Internet Use

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Digital Dilemmas: How Elementary Preservice Teachers Reason about Students' Appropriate Computer and Internet Use
Yasmin B Kafai, Althea Scott Nixon, Bruce Burnam. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. Norfolk: 2007. Vol. 15, Iss. 3; pg. 409, 16 pgs


Abstract (Summary)
While the successful integration of computers into classroom instructional practices continues to be an important topic of educational research and policy (Cuban, 2001), educators face additional concerns involving appropriate uses of computer technologies, such as students plagiarizing from the Internet, spreading rumors in chat rooms, and accessing pornographic web sites at computers in schools. Many issues related to the use of information technologies appear to be multifaceted issues.\n For instance, as legal regulations are set into place for what counts as acceptable in the digital culture, preservice teachers can use pedagogical strategies that build from students' prior knowledge and justifications to help students understand the legal and ethical issues surrounding school uses of information and content from digital sources such as the Internet.

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Copyright Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education 2007
[Headnote]
With increased computer technology use in schools, preservice teachers must be prepared to deal with ethical issues involved in a range of computer uses, such as students plagiarizing from the Internet or accessing adults-only web sites. We investigated preservice teachers' judgments regarding several scenarios of student uses of the computer and Internet. Results show that most of the preservice teachers believed that appropriate uses of the computer and Internet involve specific classroom and school rules rather than universal considerations. We also asked the preservice teachers to predict elementary school students' responses to the same scenarios. Preservice teachers were at times able to predict students' judgments for whether the behavior was appropriate; however, they were unable to explain why students made those judgments. Our findings provide valuable information for teacher education programs on how preservice teachers can be better prepared for classroom incidents and, in turn, can help students understand the issues involved in various uses of the computer and Internet.


While the successful integration of computers into classroom instructional practices continues to be an important topic of educational research and policy (Cuban, 2001), educators face additional concerns involving appropriate uses of computer technologies, such as students plagiarizing from the Internet, spreading rumors in chat rooms, and accessing pornographic web sites at computers in schools. As a result, school administrators across the nation have begun developing curriculum materials on computer ethics and implementing acceptable use policies to regulate computer and Internet use (Dill & Anderson, 2003). These local policies, however, continually change amidst national debates on whether laws, including the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act, make "the United States less free and ultimately less creative" (Boynton, 2004, p. 42). These laws are also ambiguous, forcing people to interpret them in multiple ways and decide on their own what uses of the computer and Internet are appropriate (Davis, Samuelson, Kapor, & Reichman, 1996).
Teachers confront such issues on a daily basis in their classrooms. While trying to implement computers in their classroom curriculum, they must deal with highly debated, continually changing, and oftentimes difficult to understand policies regulating student computer and Internet use. Teachers need not only to understand these policies but also to have an awareness of students' beliefs, so that they can offer students more than a set of policy regulations to follow: "Ethical issues are complex [and] a list of rules is not adequate to help enhance a student's understanding" (Carpenter, 1996, p. 60). Increasing understanding is of particular importance for teacher education programs where education in computer ethics is now part of most teacher-credential ing requirements (International Society for Technology in Education [ISTE], 2002). More than 90% of states have adopted or incorporated technology standards that include computer ethics. Yet despite these requirements, we know virtually nothing about preservice teachers' judgments and justifications about dilemmas in the digital domain or their understanding of students' judgments and justifications.
As preservice teachers prepare to deal with the application of acceptable use policies in their daily classroom life, their pedagogical decisions need to be informed by students' beliefs, which may not be the same as theirs. If preservice teachers understand students' judgments and justifications, they can help students develop a better understanding of the issues regarding appropriate uses of information and content from digital sources such as the Internet. We argue that such understanding has the potential to create more responsible participation and to impact student use beyond the traditional short-term behavioral adjustments. Using student beliefs to inform pedagogical practice is common in other school disciplines (e.g., Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000), yet little research on what teachers know about student judgments and justifications about appropriate uses to inform their classroom computer practices has been done, providing the impetus for the study described in this article.
This article reports findings from a study of preservice teachers' judgments and justifications about digital dilemmas. We presented 66 elementary school preservice teachers with four scenarios that addressed student copyright use and web browsing and computer use in school settings. We asked these preservice teachers to judge whether the behaviors described in the scenarios were appropriate (their judgments), and to explain why (their justifications). We also asked these teachers to make predictions of how students would respond to the very same scenarios. We compared these predictions with a dataset of actual responses from 215 elementary school students. Our findings provide valuable information for teacher education programs on how preservice teachers can be better prepared for classroom incidents and, in turn, can help students understand the issues involved in various uses of the computer and Internet.


THREE Things I learned from my Reading Assignment (RA)

1. Paradigm shift on classroom instructional practices through innovation in technology such as the use of Computers and Internet resources creates a classroom environment that is more interactive and interesting for both learners and educators. Using Internet puts the concept of “anytime, anywhere” into a higher level as long as learning is concerned. (e.g. online classes or e- classes : a class caters for those are too far or too busy to attend class ; learners who missed class could now go over the lecture notes and presentation of that day through online etc.). Possibility is endless.

2. An educators and learners major dilemma on using Internet resources concerns the reliability, validity and authority of growing information resources available in many websites. Educators also face additional concerns on ethical issues involving appropriate uses of computer technologies, such as students plagiarizing from the Internet, spreading rumors in chat rooms, and accessing pornographic web sites at computers in schools.

3. It is a fact that there are many advantages to use the services of the Internet particularly the tools and resources on the Web. But information overload could also be hazardous not only for children, young adult but adult as well, there are legal and ethical issues that most of the end-users are not aware of.





APPLICATION/IMPLICATION

Integrating the use of Internet on classroom instruction encourages more students to take an active role in their education however information overload is uncontrollable. Institutions (e.g. school & university) least can do to pacify or control issues concerning digital dilemmas on appropriate use of Computer and Internet is to set legal regulations on ethical issues using these digital resources. Dissemination of proper information of institution on ethical issues using digital resources is essential for community education for them to comply on such rules and regulations. Legal rules and regulation would discourage unnecessary use of Computer and Internet