Duty Of Care

Of increasing concern are the duty of care issues engendered by the Web 2.0 juggernaut. As mentioned before, everybody is "time poor" especially class teachers. Security is an issue with most Web 2.0 sites, and before we have everyone on board there is talk of Web 3.0. 

It's a little like launching into 3D television sets. Before we really understand much about the ramifications of using the new technology, we need to rely on the advice of people who are strangers to us, many of them with their own agenda. It is so easy to get carried away and launch unknowingly into the Web 2.0 applications, and while it is one thing for us to do it on our own volition, it is another thing entirely to take our students with us.  We need to familiarise ourselves with the security flaws, become familiar with privacy settings, and endeavour to understand as much as we can about copyright before we can teach this to others.

The first stop should be the Smart Copying website. Even then, some issues are still cloudy e.g the use of You Tube videos. Apparently You Tube allows the copying of videos for personal, not educational use, yet provides embedding codes for insertion in blogs, wikis etc.  Most of the Web 2.0 sites promote the use of images.  How many of our students simply "Google" image search and seem to believe it's free because it's on the web. We need to teach our students about "fair use" and abide by it ourselves.  

To be continued.....