NewTechKids is featured in a recently-published guide to teaching students about the ethics of technology. The book, “Ethics in A Digital World: Guiding Students Through Society’s Biggest Questions”, was written by Kristen Mattson and published by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).
We contributed a case study describing how we integrate critical thinking about technology in our curriclulum. Specifically, we co-developed a six-lesson curriculum module for students ages 8-12 called “Thinking about the Ethics of technology with Lara Mikocki, an applied ethics subject matter expert.
The book describes how we teach students three ethical theory frameworks used by professional ethicists:
- Consequentialism: exploring the consequences of technology
- Virtue Ethics: analyzing how technology reflects the characteristics we value as a society
- Kantianism: thinking about the moral rules which help us decide between right and wrong
The reason we teach students about the ethics of technology is to produce technologists who think about the consequences and implications of the technology before, during and after they create it as well as citizens who have the ability to think critically about technology and evaluate its role in their lives. By teaching tech ethics early and consistently, we ensure that our students acquire important thinking tools which they can use for the rest of their lives, no matter how technology evolves.