Ethics of Digital Literacy

The digital era has brought many opportunities - and many challenges - to teachers and students at all levels.  Underlying questions about how technologies have changed the ways individuals read, write, and interact are questions about the ethics of participation in a digital world.  As users consume and create seemingly infinite content, what are the moral guidelines that must be considered? How do we teach students to be responsible, ethical citizens in a digital world?This book shares practices across levels, from teaching elementary students to adults, in an effort to explore these questions. It is organized into five sections that address the following aspects of teaching ethics in a digital world: ethical contexts, ethical selves, ethical communities, ethical stances, and ethical practices.

In this edited collection, Kristen Hawley Turner brings together educational researchers, teachers and teacher educators to address an important question: In today's digital world, how do students become critical thinkers, ethical consumers and literate citizens? The authors in this book offer answers from a variety of perspectives as they consider how ethical considerations of context, community, self, stance and practice shape the teaching of digital literacy. Perhaps the most important element of this book is the acknowledgment that developing digital literacy is an inherently ethical endeavor for both teachers and students, shaped by personal and societal determinations of importance, impact and value. By demonstrating that teachers at all levels can - and do - address ethical issues in their teaching of digital literacy, this book encourages us to consider how we, too, can make our classrooms spaces for ethically literate understanding.--Melanie Shoffner, professor of middle, secondary, and mathematics education, James Madison University; author of "When the Gun Isn't Metaphorical: Educating Teachers in the Age of School Shootings", This volume in Rowman & Littlefield's "Teaching Ethics across the American Educational Experience" series focuses on how kindergarten through undergraduate students are learning, and instructors are teaching, ethical dimensions of digital literacy. Five sections of essays address "Ethical Contexts," "Ethical Selves," "Ethical Communities," "Ethical Stances," and "Ethical Practices." The brief reflections by the editor that conclude each section could serve equally well as introductory segments, as they outline the themes and issues covered by the chapters in their section. The essays themselves are brief (six to ten pages), and most include some theoretical grounding as well as practical classroom applications. . . Summing Up: Recommended. . . Faculty and professionals.--CHOICE, With its unique focus on ethics and crucial emphasis on equity and access, this volume offers fresh inspiration for digital literacy education. Ed tech teachers, media specialists, librarians, and classroom teachers of core subjects will find powerful meditations about, and novel ideas for, the necessary work of supporting all youth in today's interconnected world.--Carrie James, Research Associate & Principal Investigator, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Kristen Hawley Turner, PhD, is Professor and Director of Teacher Education at Drew University in New Jersey.  She is the founder and director of the Drew Writing Project and Digital Literacies Collaborative.