Shawn Lennie, Ethical Complexities in the Virtual World: Teacher Perspectives of ICT Based Issues and Conflicts, Doctor of Philosophy, CTL, OISE, 2013. Using a qualitative research methodology, this study explores the perceptions that K-12 teachers have on the ethical issues they have experienced as a result of, or in relation to, ICT. Participants included 10 practicing teachers who had identified experience with ICT based issues in their teaching practice. Each participant engaged in two semi-structured interviews focused on the research topic. The first interview explored the perceptions and experiences that the participants had with ICT based issues in their practice, while the second involved an examination of eight vignettes involving ICT based issues that were ethical in nature. The use of this approach provides a descriptive account of the experiences and perceptions of the participants in the study. Results from the study highlight the impact that ethical issues involving technology have on the moral work of teachers and the challenges that emerge as teachers attempt to identify morally responsible ways to respond to the complex and dynamic challenges that they face. Participants demonstrate a heightened sensitivity to ethical issues involving technology that compromise the safety and well-being of children, such as cyber-bullying, as well as those that compromise professional and academic integrity, such as plagiarism. Results also reveal the predominant use of subjective moral judgment when evaluating the moral significance of ICT based issues and reluctance on the part of teachers to challenge the inappropriate use of technology by their colleagues. This contrasts with a strong belief that teachers play an important role as moral models for students who are developing an understanding of what constitutes responsible digital behaviour. These results are significant to scholarship on teacher professionalism, digital ethics and citizenship, and policy development relating to ICT based issues.

Shawn Lennie, Ethical Complexities in the Virtual World: Teacher Perspectives of ICT Based Issues and Conflicts, Doctor of Philosophy, CTL, OISE, 2013. Using a qualitative research methodology, this study explores the perceptions that K-12 teachers have on the ethical issues they have experienced as a result of, or in relation to, ICT. Participants included 10 practicing teachers who had identified experience with ICT based issues in their teaching practice. Each participant engaged in two semi-structured interviews focused on the research topic. The first interview explored the perceptions and experiences that the participants had with ICT based issues in their practice, while the second involved an examination of eight vignettes involving ICT based issues that were ethical in nature. The use of this approach provides a descriptive account of the experiences and perceptions of the participants in the study. Results from the study highlight the impact that ethical issues involving technology have on the moral work of teachers and the challenges that emerge as teachers attempt to identify morally responsible ways to respond to the complex and dynamic challenges that they face. Participants demonstrate a heightened sensitivity to ethical issues involving technology that compromise the safety and well-being of children, such as cyber-bullying, as well as those that compromise professional and academic integrity, such as plagiarism. Results also reveal the predominant use of subjective moral judgment when evaluating the moral significance of ICT based issues and reluctance on the part of teachers to challenge the inappropriate use of technology by their colleagues. This contrasts with a strong belief that teachers play an important role as moral models for students who are developing an understanding of what constitutes responsible digital behaviour. These results are significant to scholarship on teacher professionalism, digital ethics and citizenship, and policy development relating to ICT based issues.

Yes / The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Digital technologies (DT) is proliferating a profound socio-technical transformation. Governments and AI scholarship have endorsed key AI principles but lack direction at the implementation level. Through a systematic literature review of 59 papers, this paper contributes to the critical debate on the ethical use of AI in DTs beyond high-level AI principles. To our knowledge, this is the first paper that identifies 14 digital ethics implications for the use of AI in seven DT archetypes using a novel ontological framework (physical, cognitive, information, and governance). The paper presents key findings of the review and a conceptual model with twelve propositions highlighting the impact of digital ethics implications on societal impact, as moderated by DT archetypes and mediated by organisational impact. The implications of intelligibility, accountability, fairness, and autonomy (under the cognitive domain), and privacy (under the information domain) are the most widely discussed in our sample. Furthermore, ethical implications related to the governance domain are shown to be generally applicable for most DT archetypes. Implications under the physical domain are less prominent when it comes to AI diffusion with one exception (safety). The key findings and resulting conceptual model have academic and professional implications.

This thesis explores the content and position of ethics in the digital literacy of secondary school teachers. Ethics plays a very important role in the overall adult literacy in the 21st century. Ethics is an essential part of the everyday life of a secondary school teacher, not only in online teaching conducted through digital technologies with social networking elements, but also in working with the information (data) that they encounter in the course of their job duties and in their daily lives The theoretical part of the thesis focuses on ethics in relation to digital literacy and the digital world. It analyses the notion of digital as such and, on its basis, the andragogical view of ethics and digital literacy. It defines the concepts of digital ethics and digital literacy in all interactions, both in a historical context in relation to the development of digital technologies and in relation to the digital identities of the contemporary citizen. The thesis explores the new concept of "digital identities-domains" in terms of the emergence of information (data) about the individual and the interaction of the individual with the digital world through digital identities. It systematizes individual digital identities, their influence on the individual and his/her life in the technological world. It...

Convergence of novel technologies with smart cities is evolving now. Specifically Artificial Intelligence (AI) by means of sensors and cameras is used to make sense of city data for multiple purposes. Recent COVID-19 pandemic has shown that cities worldwide try to use AI technology for assisting in decision making and see the impact of certain socio-economic measures of city authorities in connection to pandemic. This thesis is a Qualitative study of a Helsingborg city AI application project for temperature detection by means of thermal sensors located on Helsingborg, Sweden central station for anonymous measuring of people temperature. Specifically, this study aims to understand how aware are project team members of the ethical considerations in connection to AI application for health detection in smart city of Helsingborg, related decision making and how they perceive it.   Data was gathered by means of Qualitative interviews which were hold online. This study has shown that convergence of AI and a smart city raises important ethical questions and perceived by some respondents as possibility to change the attitude towards privacy if connected to crisis events such as pandemics. The case study shows that in the researched AI project project team members considered ethics in connection to AI in terms of technology, legal issues, open collaboration and open data sharing with citizens. At the same time this project is willing to challenge existing norms and drive forward the development of ethics in connection to AI usage in a smart city.

Holographic communications technologies are a new digital technology being currently  developed by companies to be available to the public in the near future. Through holographic  communications technologies, the image of one user located in one place can be captured with  special equipment from different angles, so that its three-dimensional depiction is created  realistically. The 3D depiction is then transmitted in high-quality to another user located in some  other remote place, creating a whole new experience of unconventional data communication. This  new digital technology is planned to be deployed in several fields, such as marketing, education,  medicine, business and entertainment. However, like any new technological tool that is  introduced, also in the case of holographic communication technologies there are ethical and/or  legal challenges that could emerge from its misuse and set in danger fundamental human rights.  Hence, research was conducted as an interpretive qualitative study to explore the potential ethical  and/or legal challenges of holographic communications technologies by considering the  knowledge, opinions, experiences, and perspectives of legal experts, as well as experts on ethical  issues. The empirical data was collected through individual semi-structured interviews from the  selected participants, and from the review of mainly confidential documents, before being  subjected to a thematic analysis. The analysis of the data gave prominence to five themes which  were reviewed in the context of the research question and the proposed theoretical framework  with the help of Ethical Technology Assessment (ETA). The discussion of the findings revealed  that the most prominent challenges that could arise from the use of holographic communications  technologies are privacy and data protection issues. It was further shown that existing digital  technologies with similar features and the ethical and/or legal challenges confronted in the past  about them can be of help to approach the ones regarding holographic communications  technologies. The research indicated that the designing phase of a new digital technology, and  accordingly holographic communication technologies, is important as decisions are being made  about the technical features of it, as well as the capabilities it will offer to the end users. Hence, it  plays a vital role to whether the use of the digital technology will be according to ethics and laws  later on. It was also shown that the participation of end users in this phase is important to reflect  their concerns and desires with the creators before the new digital technology is introduced, but  it is still a challenge to decide who will be included and on what criteria they will be selected.   The research showed that existing ethical and legal frameworks are important to form a  corresponding framework for holographic communications technologies and can be built upon.  However, this is also a challenge, as, according to the research, any new framework that will be  constructed with regard to holographic communications technologies cannot possibly be  unanimous as different norms and societal beliefs apply to different territories or domains, but  should rather be “personalized” according to the targeted audience.