Week5: Discussion Reflection

 I think this course really reminds me how it was like working as a teacher back in Korea. I'd like to mention some of my experiences with the topic in this post. But before I start, I want to note that I really like Brett and Shiyao's opinion about privacy: "When a product is free, you as the user are the product.", "In the era of Web 2.0, if I'm not paying for a product (social media), then I am the product." I totally agree.

    But what stroke me the most in this week's discussion was topic 2, the ethical concerns for educators. It was surprising to see my classmates more worried about students' privacy being invaded by educators. It's the opposite in Korea. For example, Korean parents tend to think that the teachers are not sincere enough if they are reluctant to share their phone numbers with the parents in their class. They think they should be able to contact the teacher anytime (literally anytime, even during weekends and at night) if there's an emergency about their kid, which is, usually trivial like 'What do we have to prepare for the art class tomorrow?' I used to pay an extra couple of dollars every week to maintain two phone numbers in a single device to protect my privacy from the parents. If someone has my phone number, my Kakaotalk account (the major Korean messenger) will appear and they could see everything I post on my profile. I remember there was an online controversy. A kindergarten teacher worked out really hard and took a picture of herself in a bikini. She set it as her profile picture because she was proud of what she has achieved. But she was criticized by the parents in her class because she was 'inappropriate' as a kindergarten teacher. Are parents wrong? Or was she wrong? 

    I think teachers also need a boundary for their personal life from their work. But since there is a perspective that understands the teacher as someone who should be committed, sacred, and voluntary, sometimes the teachers who want to perceive their work as 'work' are targeted for criticism. And with social media blurring the boundary of being professional and being casual, teachers are suffering more and more from the overenthusiastic parents' invasion, at least in Korea.

    So there are specially designed social media only for elementary schools in Korea. Classting, Class123, and several other services provide functions such as the teacher's 'safe number' that teachers can use to communicate with parents without exposing their original phone number. It has dashboards for daily announcements, assignment submissions, quizzes, and discussion boards. 

    Intellectual property issues were also interesting because the culture is a bit different in Indischool, a major teacher community in Korea. All teachers uploading anything to Indischool tentatively agree that it's free to be used and edited. And of course, teachers do not pretend something is theirs when it is not. Some teachers who are interested in personal branding tend to make their own unique template or watermark to make sure that is theirs or share their materials through Google Drive, allowing others only to view, not edit. But that is considered to be exceptional in the culture of Indischool. I think this is possible maybe because it is quite a closed community with a strong sense of belonging.