Legal,+Safety+&+Ethical+Guidelines

There are many legal, safe and ethical guidelines that affect teachers and students when working online. It is most iportant that students are informed about these issues from a very early age and that they are frequently reminded of their rights and responsibilities and that teachers are constanly demonstrating correct procedures. With most of the the ICTs investigated so far in this course, it has been necessary to create accounts to access these applications and tools. Students will need to remember that most things that they post online (whether or not the settings are private or public), will be able to be viewed by somebody – mainly in this case, their teacher and peers. Each school will have their own rules regarding internet use which would have been created by referring to legal documents and education department documents. As a general rule, unless a certain image, video or document belong to you, it is necessary to refernece all other material you use.

Child safety is probably //the// most important issue regarding the use of web based ICTs in a classroom. Students need to be informed of age-appropriate dangers that are possible to encounter online. Students need to be informed of the potential risks of providing personal details online, material they might be exposed to and their responsibilities towards other online users. Teachers need to be extremely vigilant with the tasks they assign their students so that any chance of student safety being challenged is excluded. As with copyright and referencing issues, students need to be reminded of these issues and also the knowledge to know what to do in case there is a breach of security or safety.

(Please note, that this information has been copied from Suzanne McKenna's blog from her first assignment for FAHE11001 Managing E-Learning which can be found here: Blog for assignment one.