February 2007 — News
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Moderating and Ethics for the Classroom Instructional Blog
Ethical considerations
A blog is still a public forum, even in the gated environment of a password-protected class account you might have created with services such as Class BlogMeister or Edublogs.org. Martin Kuhn (2005) suggested that any valid code of blogging ethics needs to consider values both unique to and shared among those in the blogging culture. The ethics debate goes on, and there is still no agreement about best practices, nor how to enforce a code should one be developed (e.g., Bloggers Code Imminent?). However, as educators, we are charged with keeping our students safe and instilling ethical considerations in them. As you monitor a blog, will you delete comments that don't meet your standards or appear to hurt others? How much free expression should you permit in the K-12 blog? Should learners define their own blogging rules? According to Kuhn, "Any workable code of blog ethics would need to strike a balance between ['factual truth' and 'free expression'] and encourage practices that would enhance both" (p. 6). In general, the rules of engagement in blogs appear to include the need for truth, accuracy, and accountability for what you say, as well as respect for others even when you might disagree with them. There is also need to ensure that bloggers keep private issues private to minimize potential harm to others.
Final words
The blogosphere is filled with dangers--"misrepresenting opinion as fact, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, and newer trends, such as word of mouth marketing" (Kuhn, 2005, p. 5), and before entering that bigger world, you can use your classroom blog to do more than help students reach instructional goals. With good moderating, you can teach them the skills for monitoring their own online behaviors. In the end, ethical self-monitoring is what ensures that the blog is a vehicle of trusted content.
Resources
- Classblogmeister.com Blogger's Contract
- Glencoe.com Using Blogs to Integrate Technology in the Classroom
- TeachersFirst.com Blog Basics
- TeachersFirst.com Sample Classroom Blogger Agreement
- Net Alert Limited (AU) What are Blogs? (with benefits, dangers, safety issues)
References
Glogoff, S. (2005). Instructional blogging: Promoting interactivity, student-centered learning, and peer input. Innovate, 1(5). Retrieved February 9, 2007 from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=126
