Evaluating the impact of technology on learning: responsible digital citizenship – ITEM part 4

Along with assessing the impact technology is having on student learning, it’s important to consider not just what the students are doing, but also how they are doing it – they should be responsible, safe and legal when using technology.  Schools need to take responsibility for developing policies that take account of intellectual property and copyright.  In many schools more needs to be done so that both teachers and students understand the implications of these policies and to ensure that they are adhered to.  Safety and the legal and ethical use of technology is something that can be embedded into many different areas of the curriculum – it should be planned for school-wide and not just left up to individual teachers to decide whether to teach these aspects or not.  In addition teachers and administrators should themselves be principled and should model responsible social interactions and good ethical practices, for example only using licenced software, or using media with creative commons licences.

Ideas in this post are based on the ITEM Framework by Naace/Advisory Matters


Photo Credit:  Compositing The Creative Commons by Thomas Bower