You Chart It

Essential Question: How do you judge the intentions and impact of people’s words and actions online?

Key Vocabulary:
• Social Media: Digital media and technologies based on social interaction and participation
• Ethics: A set of principles and morals governing people’s behavior
• Online Ethics: A set of principles and morals governing people’s behavior as it relates to the online world
• Intentional: To do something on purpose
• Impact: To have an effect

Questions to consider:
a. What are ways that people connect and communicate with each other through digital media?
b. Example of Ethics:
c. What are online ethics?
d. What are some of the ways that online relationships are different than offline relationships?

Message:
When we are online, our choices can affect how we communicate with others and impact our relationships with others. Each person should be a good friend, family member, student, or citizen and do things that are helpful to others. However, when we are online we can hurt others. Sometimes we may hurt someone on purpose, but a other times we might hurt someone without even knowing it because we can’t see the effect of our actions down the line. When it comes to being a good person online, it is important to reflect carefully on how our choices – as simple as a click of the mouse or the push of a button can affect the lives of others.

Student Activity:

Download the following: FirstName_LastInitial_YouChartIt.jpg
Change the name to reflect your information and open it with Paint.

Let's explain the chart:
Y axis: the Intention
Unintentional: Even if we don’t intend to help or hurt someone, effects from the choices we make can be unintentional. Unintentional effects can happen by accident, laziness, or by simply not taking a moment to consider the possiblie consequences of a choice we make.
Intentional: Hurting or helping someone intentionally means that we do it on purpose, we make a choice to help or hurt.

The X Axis: The Impact:
Helpful: Being helpful when it comes to online ethics means affecting ithers in a positive way by the choices you make online. Helpful choices include caring behavior, such as acts of kindness, making ethical choices, contributing in a positive way to an online community, and thinking about the repercussions for others before you make a decision that might affect another person.
Hurtful: Being hurtful means that something you do or a choice you make in the digital world damages someone else’s reputation or self-esteem. We often think that hurtful behavior happens on purpose, but sometimes we can hurt someone without even knowing it because our actions affect the other person at a later time.


Read through the following scenarios and chart them.  When you are finished, submit the completed JPG to me via LoopMail titled: "You Chart It"

Sammy takes photos of the school Spring Fling dance on his phone, including an extreme close-up nostril shot of his friend TJ that Sammy thinks is hilarious. He sends the photos to a few friends. The next day at school, some kids laugh and point at TJ. One student says, “Hey, booger man!” TJ can’t figure out what they are talking about. Later, when his friend forwards the offending shot, he discovers that Sammy is the culprit.

Michelle loves cats. She posts links and responses to recent articles about kitten care on her blog. Someone who is looking for information about kitten care comes across Michelle’s blog and asks Michelle how to bathe a kitten. Michelle shares her knowledge and experience about how to bathe a kitten. A few days later, the person replies by saying that she did manage to bathe her kitten but that some of the information Michelle told her was wrong, according to her veterinarian.

Jenna and Maggie don’t like Lena, the new girl at school. They send some texts to friends at school spreading information about Lena that isn’t true. They make comments such as, “I heard she was kicked out of her last school” and “The guys LOVE Lena and I know why.” Word gets around to Lena about this and she feels terrible. She wonders who said these things. How could someone say these things when they don’t even know her? How is she going to fit in now?

IMPRO78 is in a chat room with people interested in airplanes and pilots. Chris, also known as racer355, joins the chat room. “My dad is a pilot,” Chris writes. “Yeah? What kind?” says someone else. “Commercial, for Delta,” says Chris. “Evry1 knows Delta pilots are a bunch of drunks,” IMPRO78 says. “Ha ha, i hrd they hit the bottle before taking off,” someone else in the room chimes in. Chris feels slighted, and he leaves the chat room.

Kevin and GJ are collaborating on a paper for class, but Kevin is procrastinating on doing his part. GJ IM’s Kevin the night before: “Hey, I need you to add your part of the paper.” Kevin pulls some chunks of text from other online papers, pastes them into his paper, and IM’s GJ: “Done!” GJ realizes what Kevin has done, but doesn’t want to get him in trouble because they are good friends. They end up getting a C-, which really bothers GJ. The teacher never realizes that some of the paper is plagiarized.

Ronin has been assigned to write a big research and opinion paper on censorship in the United States. She is unsure of what she will write about. Carl, another student in her class, posts his idea and asks friends to help lead him to useful resources. After seeing his post, Ronin decides to use that same position in her paper. She doesn’t say anything to Carl or respond to his post.

Hannah takes a photo with her phone of her friend Shara kissing her boyfriend, Vince. Because Hannah is kind of disgusted by their excessive PDA (public display of affection), she labels the photo “lovebirds – sickening” and sends it to her friend Kelly. Kelly’s mom (who is Shara’s mom’s best friend) sees the photo and forwards it to Shara’s mom. Shara gets in trouble because she lied to her mother about the fact she was dating when she knew she wasn’t allowed to date.

Roberto has submitted a video he created about “Youth Living Green” to an online youth video contest. His friends, family, and even strangers leave positive comments, ratings, and reviews. But there is one user he doesn’t know who leaves negative comments, such as “This sucks!” and “Worst video ever.” Rorberto signs in as an anonymous user and responds: “You stink! Let’s see you do better. I challenge you.”