As both a teacher and a student I must always be cognizant of the social, ethical, legal, and human issues that surround the use of technology in educational settings. I must model appropriate use and ethical practices whenever I ask my students to work in a technology rich environment. Additionally, I realize that many of my students do not have access to computers and the internet at home, so I ensure that all work that requires access to technology can be done in class, and before or after school. To paraphrase George Orwell (1946); all men are created equal, but some are more equal than others. In other words, because I work in a low-income, predominantly Black district; I must work diligently with my students in an effort to level a playing field that socially and contextually does not necessarily reflect their best interests’.

The discipline that I teach is English. As such I must recognize the need to instill a love of reading in my students. Currently, I have an inclusion co-taught class of nineteen students that is made up of one White, sixteen Black, and two Hispanic boys. Eleven of these students are receiving Special Education services. When I administered a diagnostic to establish reading grade levels for the group I discovered that seventeen of the boys or eighty nine percent of the class was not reading at grade level. In fact sixty-three percent were reading below a fourth grade level. I teach seventh grade. Further, only one student in the class made the Reading Goal on his 6th grade 2007 Connecticut Mastery Test.

I discussed with the young men how they felt about reading. Many of them said that they hated to read. I asked them if their parents read to them when they were younger. The overwhelming response was no. According to Hrabowski, Maton, and Greif (1998) successful African-American men had a “parental focus on and involvement in reading” (p. 138) early in their lives. Because the majority of my students did not have that I discovered that I needed to start from scratch.

Here is what I have done to date. I choose high-interest texts that are appropriate for their age and maturity level. The first book we read this year was Harris and Me by Gary Paulsen (1993). I read the book to them as they followed along. They loved the book. Many of them go to the Speech and Language Pathologist weekly and she told me that the boys could not stop talking about the book.

Our focus areas for the unit were the literary elements: character traits and setting. As we read the book we made lists of character traits that reflected characters in the story. When we had completed our lists we went into the computer lab prepared to use technology to demonstrate understanding of the focus literary elements. All of the boys created a web using Inspiration ©. The assignment required them to locate a graphic to represent their chosen character, and to then create a background image that represented the setting. As they worked I recorded on task behavior at ninety-three to one-hundred percent. As the book ended I had the class begin work on a book report. They were to specifically address character traits, setting, and make a text connection (see Appendix P). For both projects the directions and models were submitted to the class using electronic shared folders. The students submitted their work to me for feedback in the same manner for a virtually paperless classroom. Both of these projects demonstrate my knowledge, understanding, and application of social and human issues related to technology that I learned through my course work at Eastern Connecticut State University . Specifically what I learned in EDU 555 through required course readings including McLaren (2003), and Rury (2005).

For my next attempt to instill a love of reading in these young men; we read and analyzed a horror story from our anthology, with the assistance of a CD recording, and read and analyzed The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. Again, the texts were chosen with care as I wanted to keep interest levels high. In this unit our focus areas included the literary elements of suspense, and ambiguous endings, pre-teaching vocabulary, and internal and external conflicts. I found interactive vocabulary exercises for both stories on the internet, so we spent some time in the lab so that the boys could build a knowledge base in order to better comprehend the texts. I learned about cognitive psychology as it relates to activating schemata in order to help students reach higher levels of thinking in EDU 511.

In addition to reading the print text of The Raven the class also watched a non-print media version of the text; The Simpsons © version, narrated by James Earl Jones, with the assistance of a TV/VCR. In order to assess their knowledge of the literary elements covered in both texts, whether print or non-print, I asked the students to develop a comic strip that demonstrated understanding of the literary element conflict (see Appendices Q and R). By presenting texts using different forms of media I was able to continue developing the students’ interest in reading while exposing them to great literature and generating higher-level thinking. These types of strategies are very effective for teachers who work with at-risk students. We can instill confidence in our students. Confidence that they can read and they can analyze and interpret difficult texts. This goes far toward empowering students who traditionally have not performed well both socially and academically.

Having demonstrated my understanding social and human issues related to technology integration in the above paragraphs; I will now address ethical and legal issues that relate to technology in education. To do so I will describe classroom rules and procedures regarding technology and the rationale behind both.

Students in my classroom must adhere to strict guidelines regarding acceptable use of technology. At the beginning of the year each student and his or her parent must sign an Acceptable Use Form prior to activating a student account. I review the policy at the beginning of the year and throughout the year as needed.

There are many web-based applications out there that can get around my district’s filtering software. As such it is essential that I keep abreast of such applications. My students have learned that I regularly check their history in Internet Explorer to see where they have been. Just yesterday I learned of https://www.vtunnel.com/ which allows students to bypass filtering software to get to sites like YouTube and MySpace. When this happens I alert the district’s IT department, deactivate the student’s internet account for one week and give the class a mini-lesson on appropriate use. My students know about this policy from the first time we use computers or the internet.

Prior to going into the computer lab or using classroom computers I tell my students what software or internet sites will be acceptable. For most web based assignments I either build a web page that has links to appropriate sites or develop a track using TrackStar from www.4teachers.org. Thus, I can guide students to appropriate sites and effectively monitor their progress. At the beginning of each year I also do a lesson that asks students to evaluate websites. The result is that my students can better determine if a website is from a reliable source. Additionally, before we embark on any web-based research project I give my students a lesson on why citations are essential for writers of research papers and how plagiarism is unacceptable in any setting. We work through how to correctly cite other peoples’ work and how to ensure that we give credit to other peoples’ work in our own writing. 

Social, ethical, legal, and human issues are very important in the technology age. However, it is important that teachers realize that their students do not necessarily come to class with an awareness of, let alone an understanding of these issues. As such it is our responsibility to ensure that we teach students why these issues are important and how to demonstrate and apply this knowledge in their work.

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