Page 241 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

13.3 Issues Involving in Emerging Technologies 235

13.3 Issues Involving in Emerging Technologies

Over the past decade, there has been an emphasis on equal access to information
and communications technologies. Lack of equal access is often referred to
regarding a divide between those in developed countries and regions and those in
less developed countries or between the well-to-do and the poor. To benefit from
new technologies, one must have access and the means to gain access to the Internet
and other resources, which is an essential and persistent concern. Other issues
related to new technologies concern privacy, ethics, and security. In addition to
these human-oriented issues, there are a number of implementation issues that need
to be addressed, including accreditation, scalability, sustainability as well as issues
that are specific to specific regions and cultures (e.g., humor, color, and examples
do not always work well in different cultural contexts).

13.3.1 Ethical, Security and Privacy Issues

Ethical, security, and privacy issues cover a family of things that have importance
in everyday life. Ethics in technology is a sub-field of ethics addressing the ethical
questions specific to the use of technology to support learning and instruction. The
ethics involved in the development of new technology—whether it is always, never,
or contextually right or wrong to invent and implement a technological innovation.
Ethics relates to the question of what is right or wrong regarding technology use in
learning. Spector (2005) proposed an educratic oath for educators, and the first part
of that oath is to do no harm to learners. Disadvantaging some learners when using
technology can widen the digital divide and is a violation of that principle.
Security is a key to technology use in education. The use of student data is
crucial for personalized learning and continuous improvement, but using student
data to create security issues. Security, acting as the stewards of student data,
presents educators with several responsibilities. School officials, families, and
software developers have to be mindful of how data privacy, confidentiality, and
security practices affect students. Schools and districts have an obligation to tell
students and families what kind of student data the school or third parties (e.g.,
online educational service providers) are collecting and how the data can be used.
Privacy is a particularly hot-button issue in technology, considering the perva-
sive nature of the Internet in people’s daily lives. Many Web sites collect user data,
from usernames and passwords to personal information such as addresses and
phone numbers, without the explicit permission of users. Selling this information is
widely considered unethical, but is often in a legal gray area because the user
provides the data in the first place.