Technology in Education

Ethics is defined in the dictionary as “the science of morals in human conduct”. In other words just plain morals, knowing right from wrong. People do not always do everything ethically for example a doctor may speak of a patient with friends or family. Educators like doctors must deal with and abide by many different ethical issues. Some recently made famous ones are teachers having intimate relationships with students. With all of the new technology today it also causes some ethical issues.

Since technology changes so fast it is sometimes hard to distinguish the correct manner in which to handle things. Cellular phones for example can cause a big distraction, and in some cases aid in students cheating. There are schools that have set up policies banning cellular phone use, and other technologies for many reasons. One reason being that they were often linked to gang activity. It has also been found that they can be sort of a safety hazard. In a crisis situation if to many students, and people around the building got on their cell phones at the same time it would possibly overload the wireless air waves and cause things to not work properly. Also cellular phones can be used to phone in bomb threats, or even be used to activate a bomb. (play it safe)

Another technology that is present in most schools is computers. While encouraged and helpful as they may be, they also can cause some issues. One of the problems that have become much more prevalent lately is cyber predators. This is something that can be controlled by close monitoring, and perhaps also by educating people so that their surroundings can be made safer and unabused.

There are five main categories of cyber-crime; financial, piracy, hacking, cyber-terrorism, and online Pornography. While all these types of crimes can be committed without the use of a computer, they still make the opportunity for these crimes more easily available. (play it safe)

Financial, is just as one might imply, stealing money. This includes such things as credit card fraud, identity theft, counterfeiting, and false claiming of funds, as well as any thing that deals with taking or receiving any type of currency that is not yours. Piracy as well, is stealing but it deals with things like software, music and book copyright and sales. While most feel downloading such things free of charge seems harmless, it is still basically taking money from the people who invested their time, money, and energy into the creation of such things. It is estimated that in the music industry alone 4.2 billion dollars is lost each year because of piracy. As stated by the band Tool “Basically it’s about music–if you didn’t create it, why should you exploit it? True fans don’t rip off their artists.” (Play it safe) (riaa)