Chapter 10-- Technology Use (ethics)

Chapter 10 Summery—Using Technology Appropriately: Policy, Leadership and Ethics


How do we teach our students to use technology in a responsible and appropriate way? This is the running theme throughout the article. Before even supplementing instruction with technology, it is important to educate them in regards to values and appropriate uses of technology.


The first value that needs to be taught is the value of respect of ownership. The servility of plagiarism is very hard to get across to the younger students. I had two fourth graders copy vocabulary sentences from the text book. They did not see the harm it their behavior at all until I gave them zeros for the assignment and did not allow for them to redo their work. Temptation to copy, cheat or plagiarize is all around us, and we need to understand that the students live in this pressure as well. “Today’s technology allows students access to mountains of information, and this access can make it tempting and easy to appropriate information and then pass it off as original work” (p.128). de Lyon Friel explains that it is important for teachers to model and teach how to cite all forms of information from e-mail to blogs. I must admit, I have not given any of my students’ citation information for e-mails, blogs, listservs and other web media. It did not occur to me that my students, being fourth graders, could plagiarize from these sources because I don’t think of them as using these sources. I think a lot of teachers show students how to cite and give credit concerning sources that they think the students will use such as books, magazines, newspapers or websites. Temptation to copy or plagiarize is heightened when asked to regurgitate facts. “Fact finding encourages students to copy and paste material from electronic sources—a new form of plagiarism.” (p.129). Therefore, de Lyon Friel states that “if students are taught to synthesize information and construct their own answers and meanings, the temptation to appropriate others’ ideas as their own is minimized” (p.129). I agree. Once you teach them how to construct their own meaning from information, then you can model for them how to cite all electronic sources. As technology evolves and information takes on new forms, we as teachers should not be naive to think that students would not use or access those new sources and should teach them how to give credit where and when credit is do.


Students should be taught how to respect the technology. de Lyon Friel states that “a well developed AUP (acceptable use policy) should cover Internet and intranet use, outline the appropriate and ethical behaviors that are expected from users of the network, and provide consequences for policy violations” (p.133). I know in Fairfax County that all students are required to fill out, sign and have their parents sign two acceptable use forms. Both forms outline the County’s policies on proper use of the computers and the equipment as well as what is appropriate behavior when using the internet. The forms also address consequences.

Teaching students to respect their privacy and others is also valuable. It is important to teach the students to be safe and responsible while surfing the net. While my husband is deployed, the battalion commander has told us not to post any personal information including photos. I think this is great advice regardless if my husband is deployed or not. Sites such as myspace and facebook offer a unique venue for expressing one’s creativity, however it is also important to be aware the dangers that accompany them. One way we can keep the students safe is to monitor their activities on the internet and show them where the appropriate sites are. I encourage my students to use yahoo kids for an appropriate search engine. The website is . We as educators need to incorporate discussions of these important values as children and young adults use technology at home and at school.

De Lyon Friel, Linda. (2001). Using Technology Appropriately: Policy, Leadership and Ethics. In Lebaron, John F. & Catherine Collier, eds. Technology in its place. Jossey-Bass, California: San-Franciso. 125-137.