[Air-l] is this ethical?

Fri Mar 16 18:47:08 PDT 2007

I usually respond to students' writing before I allow them to post 
these days.  One girl had given her parents' names and work schedules 
(complaining that they were never home and that she had to babysit her 
11-year-old sister until all hours of the night) on one of her 
self-identified blog entries.

To Caroline's point, I also always allow students to keep their 
personal posts offline, but few of them do, and when they do request 
it, I ask them to write about why they don't want to post on the 
internet.  Sometimes in the act of writing the reasons why they don't 
want to post online, they learn some very important things about how TO 
write online (as one girl who did this kept a personal journal on her 
Facebook and MySpace without questioning her internet involvement).

And to Barry's original post, as a student, I blogged (before they 
called it blogging) a response to a published article; the author's 
students found my critique online and took it in to class for her to 
see.  I maintain that my critique was accurate, but I did take the post 
down when she went on the job market again later that year.

:-)
Deanya

On Friday, March 16, 2007, at 08:38  AM, Caroline Haythornthwaite wrote:

> In the US, ethically (and possibly legally) there is a problem if an 
> instructor
> makes this mandatory and/or does not provide an alternative for those 
> who do
> not want to make their work or their name public.
>
> This is something we have discussed at my faculty and with university
> representatives. It relates to compliance with the US Family 
> Educational Rights
> and Privacy Act (FERPA) as it affects and interacts with new ways of 
> having
> students contribute to class (blogs, wikis, web pages, etc.). 
> Basically, some
> people need to keep their identity private, and the universities 
> accommodate
> that through various means. Instructors need to bear these regulations 
> in mind
> as well as their ethical responsibilities to students when asking for 
> public
> postings.
>
> /Caroline
>
>
> ---- Original message ----
>> Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 22:44:32 -0500
>> From: Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca>
>> Subject: [Air-l] is this ethical?
>> To: aoir list <air-l at aoir.org>
>>
>> I have Google Alert set to identify anything online that mentions my 
>> name.
>> (I want to know who is talking about me and perhaps learn from their
>> comments.)
>>
>> Recently, I have been disturbed because Google Alert keeps popping up
>> Blogspot entries that clearly come from class blog entries.
>>
>> While I am happy that folks are reading my stuff, I am aghast that 
>> their
>> entries are on the web for all to read.  (Altho I smile that they say 
>> nice
>> things.)
>>
>> I know that I don't post my students' term papers on the web [I only 
>> give
>> 'em to Turnitin;-)], but this strikes me as an even greater invasion 
>> of
>> the students' privacy. Shouldn't such within-class stuff be password
>> protected?
>>
>> I'm putting one innocuous example up below my .sig, but I've 
>> encountered
>> at least four others.
>>
>> Barry Wellman
>> _____________________________________________________________________
>>
>>  Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
>>  Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>>  455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>>  wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>>        for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>> _____________________________________________________________________
>>
>> 3) What was "Netville" in the suburbs of Toronto? Why's it important 
>> in
>> relation to the paradox argument?
>>
>> This was written buy our good friend Barry wellman again ( jokes) . 
>> The
>> Netville in the suburbs was looking at the internet as a part of how 
>> it
>> structures the community life if it hinders and brings people closer
>> together within the community environment.
>>
>> http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman/publications/neighboring/
> neighboring_netville.pdf
>>
>> It looks at how the internet is effecting community life whereby it is
>> leading people away from the enclosures of the community social life 
>> by
>> now engaging on the internet for their social activity or on the other
>> hand is this use of the internet bringing the community closer 
>> together as
>> a whole.
>>
>> With relation to the paradox this is where the argument fell that the
>> influence of the internet has decreased the social interaction within 
>> the
>> community. This study looks at how the internet supports weaker ties
>> within the community helps mend bridges and bring the community closer
>> together but still looking it as a context rather than the paradox by
>> stating the negative side.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
> ----------------------------------------
> Caroline Haythornthwaite
> Associate Professor
> Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of 
> Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820
>
>
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