Equity, Ethics, and Technology Description: This week we discussed equity and ethics issues when applying technologies. Through the discussion and reading of the PT 3 Case Study, the issue of “health and safety considerations” caught my attention.
Impact: As I read through the discussion, the case study, and studied the ITSE, I realized that there were some concerns that I needed to address at my school (at least in my classroom). Due to job cuts, there is no full time technology person in our school. The computer labs are open to anyone and it is somewhat unspoken that you are to take care of the labs when you use them. However, these labs take some abuse and there are very few people in the school that know how to fix or even maintain any of the computers or software in the labs. As I read this week, I realized how much of a problem this might become. I don’t want to loose privileges to the computer lab and I don’t want things in there to become so damaged that nothing works.
Intent: What I am planning and have started to do is make a set of computer lab rules that can be posted in the all the labs in the school. Along with the rules I have set some punishments that go with the various rules that could be broken. I plan to sit down with administration go over my ideas and get as much approval as possible. Once I have sat down with them, the next step is to come up with some kind of teacher training involving the computer labs. In the training, we would spend time going over the rules and consequences for the computer lab. We would also spend some time going over basic safety instructions for the lab and give teachers tools to use when they use the lab. One other thing I would try to do is bring in the district IT person, and have them go over a few tips on taking care of any hardware and software within the computer lab.
Description: This week we discussed equity and ethics issues when applying technologies. Through the discussion and reading of the PT 3 Case Study, the issue of “health and safety considerations” caught my attention.
Impact: As I read through the discussion, the case study, and studied the ITSE, I realized that there were some concerns that I needed to address at my school (at least in my classroom). Due to job cuts, there is no full time technology person in our school. The computer labs are open to anyone and it is somewhat unspoken that you are to take care of the labs when you use them. However, these labs take some abuse and there are very few people in the school that know how to fix or even maintain any of the computers or software in the labs. As I read this week, I realized how much of a problem this might become. I don’t want to loose privileges to the computer lab and I don’t want things in there to become so damaged that nothing works.
Intent: What I am planning and have started to do is make a set of computer lab rules that can be posted in the all the labs in the school. Along with the rules I have set some punishments that go with the various rules that could be broken. I plan to sit down with administration go over my ideas and get as much approval as possible. Once I have sat down with them, the next step is to come up with some kind of teacher training involving the computer labs. In the training, we would spend time going over the rules and consequences for the computer lab. We would also spend some time going over basic safety instructions for the lab and give teachers tools to use when they use the lab. One other thing I would try to do is bring in the district IT person, and have them go over a few tips on taking care of any hardware and software within the computer lab.