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Ethics Project One

In his now-defunct column, Randy Cohen, Times Magazine columnist, answered readers' questions on ethical issues each week. Below is an actual letter he received.

Part One:

  • Read the letter below.
  • Write a 200 word (or more) response giving your opinion about the situation itself, and your advice on what the teacher should have done.
  • Your response must be written in Google Documents, and submitted through Google Classroom.
  • The title of your document will be (Section) Last Name, First Name Ethics Project One. Substitute your section for the word (Section).
  • Word count:
    • Tools<Word count
    • -or- Control+Shift+C
  • After you have finished writing your response, submit your work through Google Classroom.


A Facebook Teaching Moment
By RANDY COHEN
Published: July 1, 2009

The letter:


My friend is a popular eighth-grade teacher. She has a Facebook account and has been “friended” by many of her students, who make their pages available to her. Consequently, she has learned a lot about them, including the inevitable under-age drinking and drug use and occasional school-related mischief like cheating on tests or plagiarizing assignments. Must she report any of this to the school, the police or the parents? The school has no policy for dealing with this modern problem. A.S., NEW YORK


Part Two (optional):

The goal of Part Two is to for you to apply what you have learned about CSS in Dreamweaver to your skills in Google Documents. This has the potential to greatly improve your word processing skills. The ability to create a flawless word processing document is a core technology skill that you should master.

Key Concept:

Word processing allows a C or D document to look like an A document. The difference is in how carefully the writer goes over his or her work- not what their rough draft looked like. When you leave mistakes in, you are projecting an attitude of laziness and indifference. The reader knows that you saw the mistake (we all have access to spell check), but were too lazy to do anything about it. This weakens your writing, because whatever point you were trying to make will not be taken as seriously no matter how well you expressed it.

Format the Document:
  • Make sure you have a complete page heading at the top of the document.
  • Check your Word Count. You are required to have 200 words or more.
    • Tools<Word count
    • -or- Control+Shift+C
  • Check your Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.
    • If you include any of the following mistakes, the highest grade you will be given is a C. This list subject to change with minimal notice.
      • Capitalization:
        • i instead of I
        • Starting any sentence with a lowercase letter
        • Misspelling your name, for example:
          • george smith instead of George Smith
      • Improper abbreviations, for example:
        • u instead of you
      • Punctuation
        • Leaving out ending punctuation on a sentence.
  • Format your Page Heading as Normal Text
    • Change your Normal Text font to 13 point Garamond, Dark Blue
  • Format your Title as Heading 2
    • Change your Heading 2 font to 17 point Bold Garamond, Dark Blue
  • Format your body text as Normal Text
    • Change your Normal Text font to 13 point Garamond, Dark Blue

Part Three

Submit your assignment through Google Classroom.

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Randy Cohen's Response:

(source: ibid)

This teacher should respond to students apt to get themselves into trouble, and the most significant peril you describe may not be a little teenage drinking or recreational drug use but the public exposure of this “mischief.” Your friend has a chance to teach these students about Internet privacy or the lack of it. She should carpe that diem. Were she simply to bust these online doofuses, she would squander a chance to convey something of lasting importance and leave them feeling that she had betrayed their trust. In short, her essential role is educator, not cop.

Strictly speaking, when these students gave her access to their Facebook pages, they waived their right to privacy. But that’s not how many kids see it. To them, Facebook and the like occupy some weird twilight zone between public and private information, rather like a diary left on the kitchen table. That a photo of drunken antics might thwart a chance at a job or a scholarship is not something all kids seriously consider. This teacher can get them to think about that.

She might send e-mail messages to transgressing students, noting their misdeeds and reminding them of their vulnerability. Or she could address her entire class, citing (anonymous) examples of student escapades. Or she could encourage her school to include a regular instructional session on the Internet and its pitfalls.

This is not to advocate turning a blind eye to bad behavior. It is to establish priorities. If a kid is in genuine danger, she should intervene swiftly. When students violate academic standards, she should warn them sternly — in her first e-mail message — that the lesson has been conveyed, there are no more free passes and henceforth they can expect her to respond vigorously to anything she learns online.

Your friend should also think about the boundaries she maintains between herself and her students. It is great that they can confide in her as long as she remembers that “confide in” is different from “gossip with,” and that she is their teacher, not their pal, a necessary distinction if she is to be effective as the former.