Cool Cat T, talks about Ethics and Education

Vicki David, the Cool Cat Teacher, wrote a great post yesterday about cyber cheating and teaching honesty to our students.

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Candid Cheating with the Camera Phone?:

We’re paying for kill switches, security cameras, aplagiarismism checkers (turnitin.com) to keep students honest! How about kids just being honest?

Here is an edited version of my comment to her post, following an equally valuable comment from Tasmanian educator, Roger Stack.

I agree whole-heartedly that the solution is not in the technology.  We can’t geek honest and reliable assessment from our students.  It’s just a challenge to them.  It’s like Internet filtering.  The better our blocking becomes, the more resourceful they become at getting past it.  Eventually, all we’ve done is bricked up our classrooms — again.

Assessment is the same way.  If we continue to treat assessment as a laboratory endeavor, then all we’re doing is teaching students to act like lab rats.  Assessment has to be real world observation.  We have a unique opportunity today to remove classroom walls as a barrier between learners and the world they’re learning about.

Finally, I also agree with your call to instill honesty in our students.  This was the reason that I included ethics as one of the four components of contemporary literacy.  Information has become so important to our endeavors and even our survival and prosperity, that the honest, respectful, and protective use of information must become as critical as a literacy skill as the ability to decode text on a piece of paper.

Here is a link to an Student & Teacher Code of Information Ethics.  It is an MSWord file so that educators can tweak the document for grade level and even turn it into a contract.

Again, great post, my friend.