I find the Regan (2019) article most interesting because I have always thought that “teaching students in accordance with their aptitude,” a Confucius philosophy, is a good thing, without realizing that it may arise some ethical concerns in the present day and age. With technology, the old Confucius ideal is taking a different look. Big data allows for personalized content to be shared with students. But most importantly, for the big data algorithms to work, students would need to share their information, which can be potentially misused, in return. I feel that while we consider the benefits of technology, we should also consider if technology should be optimized to minimize concerns about such ethical issues. I even noticed how when I click on the link of the article, the website asks me to accept cookies before accessing the article. Most people may not realize that this is a form of private information collection. I can potentially customize what kind of cookies I want to accept, but most people are not tech-savvy to understand the implications. Therefore, I feel that we still have a long way to go in terms of cyber-security. It is not just a simple posting a question of “yes” or “no,” but teaching people the importance of understanding it and also reading the privacy agreements. Many times, even when we don’t agree with the privacy agreement, we have no choice but to agree. Perhaps one day we will have the option to decline but still have access to the cyber service.

As for setting passwords, I also have a rule of thumb. I usually use a phrase only I know and change characters to numbers or symbols. However, I also feel that it may not be as helpful as other methods of protection. For example, most phones have passwords of four or six numbers as default. If you want to set a more personalized password it may be more time-consuming to enter every time. Many payment and confidential information are stored in a person’s phone. Now with Face ID technology, it becomes much more difficult for other people to unlock your phone. However, there is still a need for numeric passwords as an alternative to Face ID. Therefore, there is still no sense of security that your information is fully protected. Many school emails and portals require students to change passwords every now and then. However, this may mean more hassle for students to have to remember all the passwords. Many people will recycle the same password, changing only the last symbol or number, to ensure that they always remember. I wish that there is a much easier way for people to safeguard their personal online information without having to go through all the trouble to designing hack-proof passwords.

References

Regan, P., & Jesse, J. (2019). Ethical challenges of edtech, big data and personalized learning: Twenty-first century student sorting and tracking. Ethics and Information Technology, 21(3), 167-179. DOI: 10.1007/s10676-018-9492-2