Digital Culture - Report Example

Introduction: Everyone aims to perk up teaching and learning. The digital culture opens the door for that. The make use of digital technology resources in enhancing the learning capability has been implemented almost in every school in the district. The aim of bringing the digital equipment is to increase the “awareness and understanding of expectations for those using technology in the classroom” (Bennett, 2005, p. 3-4). There is no doubt that the use of digital technological resources spread lots of advantages if everything used in proper way. Besides these there are some sorts of issues one need to understand regarding the use of digital resources. The intention of this report is to establish safe and healthy applications of digital resources to enable and empower diverse learners. In order to facilitate this it is necessary for every one to understand about certain issues that prevail while implementing the digital technology. The different issues can be social, ethical and legal issues. It is prerequisite that everyone needs to have knowledge regarding this digital culture. This report will explore all sorts of issues regarding digital culture in detail to educate district personnel, students and parents. Social issues: “As schools increasingly incorporate the Internet into their everyday curriculum,” (Kinnaman, 1995, para.1) it is very much important that students, teachers and district personnel need to understand about the social issues that revolve around the digital culture in order to stay away from the problems and make it more useful. Social issues can be arising when some one is misusing the technology. It can be in many ways. Downloading inappropriate content from the Internet and displaying publicaly, downloading the songs and videos and distributing these to others are all common problems that students are doing. “The production and electronic distribution of digital versions of textbooks and other instructional materials” (NIMAS development & technical assistance centers, 2010, para.1) from Internet are another widespread issues many are doing presently. So it is duty of teachers and district school counselors to make aware about these issues to the students. They need to show the right path to the students by telling advantages of the technology. The advantage can be how effective use of these technologies can make the change in their culture and how it will influence their studies. Teacher need to thoroughly explain how communication can make easy with the use of digital technology. Even parents need to check what their children are doing with digital technologies. To make students stay away from misuse of these it is everyone’s responsibility to provide more knowledge to students in order to “use the Internet and other information technologies in a safe and responsible manner” (Willard, 2010, para.1). Ethical issues: Today it has given more value for the education because it is essential for the progress or better career of one’s life. Therefore most of the schools in the district have implemented new technologies for the better education of the students. Even there are many benefits through the digital technology there are certain issues also. While considering the ethical issues of digital culture the main factor is privacy and security. As internet is an open media the possibility of accessing one’s personnel information by other is greater. So the teachers, students and other users of internet should aware about the ethical issues while using the internet. “Privacy is a status wherein an individual can work on his/her information in seclusion, resulting in a selective revelation of ones identity and information. Privacy can mean anonymity in case a person wants to remain unidentified” (Oak, 2008, para.10). Usage of internet provides various services such as email facilities, browse of different websites etc. The problem arises when the user gives their personal information in certain websites. In such cases the third person can access and read the messages or information without their permission. There are many techniques to find others password and it can able access the information very easily. Moreover when the sender sends a message the hackers may change or modify the original data during the transmission before it receives the destination, this result in achieving fault data to the receiver .The hackers are accessing the data even the data are kept very securely or yet the data are locked down. “Privacy violations, pornography, transaction security breaches, unsolicited e-mail and other questionable or illegal activities being conducted on-line have become serious issues” (Caldwell, 2005, para.3). Therefore the students must concern about the accessing of their personnel information and while choosing the password decide the best one that others can’t easily identity their password. The teachers should provide proper guidance to the students that how to send the message securely with the avoidance of hackers and how to safeguard one’s data and privacy. Legal issues: The district needs to understand the legal issues related to the developing digital culture. There can be violation of the laws while using the technology. “Teacher Facilitators should be aware of legal, social, and ethical issues in regard to technology and deliver this information through professional development to other teachers” (TF- VI. Social, ethical, legal, and human issues, 2010, para.7). There can be many legal issues related to the use of technology. The students and teachers can be unaware of the laws related to the technological uses. Many laws have to be followed while using the technologies like Internet. If these laws are violated it will become a serious crime. Many students have become criminals due to the misuse of modern technologies. The misuse can be sometimes due to the lack of knowledge. The improper use of Internet by small children has become an important issue. There is also issue of security of children while using the Internet. The children are also indulged in some illegal practices like hacking. The minors sometimes provide their personal information to strangers, which at times can cause serious problems. Accessing things from the Internet without permission, thus violating the laws is a serious legal issue. The district encourages many mandatory provisions for the use of the digital technologies. Policies should be taken for the development of teaching of legal issues for the use of technology. The district should be aware of the state and central laws and provide this to the diverse learners. For example the laws associated to the use of images i.e. the copyright laws should be known. The technology should be used to allow the learners from different surroundings, skills and characters. Reference List Bennett, L. (2005). The Social Studies: Guidelines for using technology in the social studies class room. pp.1-4. Retrieved February 19, 2010, form http://iowacoresocialstudiescurriculum.pbworks.com/f/GuidelinesforUsingTechnologyinSSClassroom.pdf Kinnaman, D. (1995). Critiquing acceptable use policies: AUPs on the sence. Dave Kinnaman. Retrieved February 19, 2010, form http://www.io.com/~kinnaman/aupessay.html NIMAS development & technical assistance center. (2010). NIMAS at CAST. Retrieved February 19, 2010, form http://nimas.cast.org/ Willard, N. (2010). Welcome to CSRIU. Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use. Retrieved February 19, 2010, form http://www.cyberbully.org/ Oak, M. (2008). Ethical issue of internet privacy . Buzzle. Com. Retrieved February 19, 2010, form http://www.buzzle.com/articles/ethical-issues-of-internet-privacy.html Caldwell, A. (2005). Ethical issue. Cyclopedia. Retrieved February 19, 2010, form http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/E-commerce_-_Overview_-_Ethical_Issues TF- VI. Social, ethical, legal, and human issues. (2010). NETS – TF. Retrieved February 19, 2010, form http://nets-tf.wikispaces.com/VI.+Social,+Ethical,+Legal,+and+Human+Issues Read More