Computer Ethics

The Internet has been around for nearly twenty years now, and since its creation, new issues have been developing rapidly that have been a challenge both to the government, law enforcement and the legal community. Simply put, the World Wide Web is evolving so quickly that old laws dealing with copyrighted material, and media (print and broadcast) are outdated and do not apply.

An emerging field of study to examine these issues is computer ethics. Ethics, in the classical sense, refers to the rules and standards governing the conduct of an individual with others. Computer ethics is concerned with standards of conduct as they pertain to computers (Source: http://library.thinkquest.org/26658/cgi-bin/1-1.cgi).

Some of the specific issues being examined within the field of computer ethics are:

• Internet Censorship (Brian)
• Email scams/spamming (Kailen)
• Net Neutrality (Sam)
• Intellectual Property/Copyright violations (Dustin)
• Cyber predators (Josh)
• Cyber bullying (Ti'quanne)
• Internet user privacy (Billy)

Your assignment is to create a minimum five slide children's book/Powerpoint that:

Defines the problem in easy to understand language and graphics.

Provides examples of the ethical issues that the problem poses.

Identifies possible solutions to the problem.

Upload the slide show to an online website (provided later).

Afterwards we will be recording your presentation as a podcast and posting to the class blog. We will be presenting your presentations to the fifth and sixth graders at a later date.

Use the link on computer ethics as a starting point.