Implications of Technology in Schools
ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is recognized as a vehicle for improving the lifestyles of individuals in United States’ societies. In recent centuries, ICT has played an essential function in the educational field in the United States, particularly in the nation’s metropolitan areas. ICT facilitates access to info and innovative aspects of communication, as well as numerous internet facilities (– for example, Facebook, email) in commercial activity, customs, amusement, societal advancement, and education. The purpose of this article is to explore the implications of legal, ethical, and social issues such as privacy, special education, harassment, bullying, and academic dishonesty as a result of information technology around the school environment.
Although innovation significantly influences knowledge collection, storage, processing, and disclosure, its primary ethical effect is on availability and information deception. It enables more excellent and concurrent access to info. As a result, more students will be able to gain access to other students’ confidential data. On the other side, an individual can be barred from accessing required data in digital form using a wide range of protection metrics such as logins. Social connectivity online sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat are popular and significant among school learners because they utilize these transparent technologies to distribute information, communicate, and build their preferred virtual identity (Gogusa & Saygın, 2019). The development of technology in school settings has led to increased risks of students’ information exposure to unnecessary parties. When private information is accessed by unfamiliar people and even their educators, it creates discomfort among students. Additionally, private entities have been collecting their personal information for commercial uses, governmental agencies monitoring their virtual learning exercises, unwelcomed advertising, or governmental interruptions to their studies.
The development of information technology in schools has led to the violation of freedom of speech. In many situations, many students from marginalized communities are attacked when they express themselves on social media platforms. Also, they have been restricted from accessing quality learning resources from online platforms. At the same moment, the vulnerability of abuse prompted by Internet information and messaging to the exercise and satisfaction of human liberties and privileges, especially the right to privacy, is greater than that prompted by conventional media. Defamatory and other evidently wrongful speech, such as hateful speech amongst students and incitement to violent acts, can be dispersed globally and is occasionally persistently accessible digitally. Additionally, information technology abolishes the necessity of bodily exercises for students with special needs. This technology has substantially promoted laziness by reducing physical dexterity to participate in any workout that includes bodily workout to the body. The role those bodily workouts perform in the body’s advancement is critical to the healthful progress of a physiologically suited person. According to the aforementioned findings, even bodily exercise by students becomes a problem because the only participation of the student is the hand or fingers, the eyes, and the ears- if there is any extra component on the list, it must be nothing other than optimum preoccupation to the computer monitor.
Some individuals utilize modern technologies to participate in tormenting, unrequested, or non-consensual sexual interrelations, such as photographs, recordings, social networks, and courting applications. The individual on the other end may feel deceived, unsafe, revealed, and concerned about their digital credibility. Sexual intimidation among students is on the rise, as are defiant erotic behavior patterns such as lesbianism, gayness, numerous erotic associates, and sexual assaults among students as a result of the sharing of erotic photos. According to studies, web-based sex occurs when students participate in sex with their associates on computer monitors through fiction, thus leading to academic failure. Cyberbullying is an unlawful exercise in which children, in particular, are lured into committing unlawful offenses without their understanding. Young students have easy direct exposure to a plethora of platforms which leads them into the gloomy tunnel of wrongdoing, which has an entrance but no escape on occasions. Numerous publications have recommended that, in several aspects, pre-adolescent students may be more susceptible to cyberbullying (Jackson & Cassidy, 2014). Younger students, for instance, may be more likely to misconstrue unclear virtual messaging, and confusion is prevalent in virtual settings. They are also more likely to make social mistakes when utilizing information technologies (for example, understating the emotional influence of a statement), which can easily result in social troubles both online and in the school environment. Also, some students use technology to bully and harass others. For example, they video-record slapping or beating others, then share the video on various media platforms. The purpose of posting the instance is to demean and embarrass the person even more.
Lastly, the emergence of information technology has led to academic dishonesty. Academic deception is a long-term problem – it has long been a source of worry in the school setting and has grown significantly in recent years. One rationale for the rise in academic deception is that more learners are engaging in internet-based studying, and novel innovation is continuously arising that can help learners or enable academic deception (Bain, 2015). Some scholars accuse information technology of the enhanced “possibilities” for dishonesty, while others believe that the elevated prevalence of dishonesty is due, at least in part, to the utilization of the online platform. With the emergence of social networks, Wikipedia, and cooperative webpages, students now have instant direct exposure to a wealth of data.
References
Aytac Gogusa, & Yücel Saygın. (2019). Privacy perception and information technology utilization of high school students. ScienceDirect.com | Science, health, and medical journals, full-text articles, and books. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405844018354926
Lisa Z. Bain. (2015). How Students Use Technology to Cheat and What Faculty Can Do About It. ERIC – Education Resources Information Center. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1137336.pdf
Margaret Jackson, & Wanda Cassidy. (2014, November 4). Cyberbullying among University students: Gendered experiences, impacts, and perspectives. Publishing Open Access research journals & papers | Hindawi. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/edri/2014/698545/
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