Cyber Ethics: Rules for Using the Web We all have heard of ethics. According to Webster’s II New College Dictionary (1995), ethics is the rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession. As Winn Schwartau (2001) stated “ethics is also about understanding how your actions will affect other people.” Cyber-ethics is the ethical decisions we make when using the Internet. We are tasked to use the Internet on a daily basis and we task students to use the Internet regularly, but to use it properly we must adhere to ethics. Ethics is not a law but your moral code. We must know how to avoid plagiarism, know the acceptable use of the Internet, and we must be familiar with Censorship in order to know what moral standards to follow with the World .
Plagiarism, or as Steven Gardiner (2001) calls it cyder cheating is the new twist for cheating. Over the years plagiarism has become much harder to detect. But, how do you know when a student has copied his work from online, and not give the proper credit to the rightful owner? I remember working on my undergrad and to prevent cyder cheating my professor only allowed us to use a limited number of Internet cites. The rest were to be from physical books from the library. I can see why a student would copy a paper over writing one.
It only takes a few minutes to search the web, cut and paste, and then add you name. The time they saved in research just added more time for them to do the things that are fun. The second way to detect cyder cheating according to Gardiner (2001) is that if you task a student to write a paper is MLA and the paper is in APA it is almost a given that the paper was not written by the student. As most teachers are parents or have that parental instinct, they are aware of the capabilities of their students. So another way to determine if the paper is a fake is ask yourself if that student could really produce that quality of work. To understand the appropriate use of the Internet you have to know what is acceptable and what is not.
The Department of Justice categorizes computer crimes in three different ways: the computer as a target, the computer as a weapon, and the computer as an accessory (e. g. , para 2, “What is Cyber Crime?” n. d.
). We must teach children how to use the Internet the right way. Much of what we know is learned, and the same goes for using the web. According to Radnofsky and Vuko (2004) we can do these things to educate kids on cyder crimes: Educate yourself about the dangers (identity theft, illegal purchases, hacking, , scam artists, ‘phishers’, viruses, worms… ) because ignoring these computer crimes unfortunately won’t make them go away. Learn the ‘cyder’ vocabulary.
There are new words out there, meaningful to your children. Make sure you understand the lingo. Talk with your kids about & safety — – personal, family, emotional, physical. Talk about ethics & morality with the family.
Establish an agreement as to what all of you believe, (make sure it’s legal! ), and stick to it. Question your children’s schools and teachers as to what — – if anything — – they are doing in. This has national standards that are required to be taught, just like standards in reading and math. The Socrates Institute has designed “The Cyber Ethics Project,’ a comprehensive K-12 curriculum in, for schools to use across the country.
It helps to increase the students’ awareness of the consequences, safety, legal and ethical use regarding the Internet and other forms of electronic data (Radnofsky & Vuko 2004). To find out more about the project visit their website at web We also have to monitor to see what students are accessing online. Because of the First Amendment, it is hard to censor what is published on the web. Congress did pass legislation requiring Internet blocking technology to block pornographic materials in all public schools and libraries funded through certain federal programs in December 2000 (Federal Censorship). But this does not apply to our homes. There are filtering tools that we can install to help prevent and make sure our children are save when using the Internet.
The concerned educator’s guide to safety and cyder-ethics says the most extreme types of digital guardians are the surveillance programs such as Spytech Spy Agent or Desktop Surveillance (Crystal, Geide, et al. , 2000). These are just a few that can be installed but there are many more to chose from. Whether you use a surveillance program or if you just stay by your child’s side you are helping to censor the materials they are viewing. Also to help us with the use of the Internet, you can view the Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics on the Computer Ethics Institute website (Crystal, Geide, et al. , 2000).
In conclusion, we must start teaching cyder ethics to our children at a young age to limit their exposure to possible damaging and incriminating materials on the web. To do this we need to teach them the proper way to cite others works and avoid plagiarism, know the acceptable use of the Internet by learning and following the acceptable usage policy that most places have. Finally we must familiarize them with Censorship so they will know how to censor out compromising data. The web can be a powerful learning tool, but if it we do not follow cyder ethics it can make the technology era a living nightmare. References Crystal, J. , Geide, C.
A. , & Saltpeter, J. (2000, November). The concerned educator’s guide to safety and cyder-ethics.
Tech Learning [Online]. Retrieved October 22, 2004: web area / archives /TL/112000/. htm Federal Censorship. (2002, February).
Retreived October 22, 2004 from the World Wide Web: web speech / censorship /Gardiner, Steven (2001). Cyber cheating: A New Twist on an Old Problem. Retrieved October 22, 2004 from the World Wide Web: web Mary and Vuko, Evelyn (2004, June 1). Teacher Says: Teaching Cyber Ethics: Kids on the Internet. Washington Post Online.
Retrieved October 22, 2004 from the World Wide Web: web Winn (2001). Cyber Ethics 101: What Are (Is) Ethics? . Retrieved October 22, 2004 from the World Wide Web: web ‘s II New College Dictionary. (1995).
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. What is a cyder crime? (n. d. ). Retrieved October 22, 2004 from the World Wide Web: web.