Values in the Digital World

"In recent decades, digital technologies have had world-changing impact. This is as terrifying as it is exciting! Thankfully, the field has attracted thoughtful, committed educators who are working to steer the uses of technology toward purposes that truly serve humanity and are deeply embedded in ethical concerns. Bellavance synthesises the best research on moral psychology and education to provide a firm foundation for education that will prepare young people to be responsible, caring, and self-aware in their many engagements with the digital world. Anne Colby, author of The Power of Ideals (with William Damon) ""Values in the Digital World"" begins with the simple but critically urgent argument that rather than simply lament the manifold negative dimensions of young people's usages of ICTs, we - parents and educators first of all - must recognise and take advantage of the positive possibilities of using ICTs as domains for ethical development. To do so, Bellavance develops an empirically-based and theoretically informed approach to understanding first of all how young people experience and articulate their engagements with ICTs in ethical - and unethical - terms. Bellavance builds an analysis of how young people in fact interact with ICTs - and, even better, how their ethical sensibilities in these domains can be demonstrably enhanced through educational approaches shaped by these empirical insights. Anyone familiar with these literatures knows that they are complex, often contradictory, and sometimes hopelessly removed from the on-the-ground realities of young people's online lives. Bellavance's volume further stands out as it is very clearly and accessibly written, and hence all the more directly useful and practicable for educators. Charles Ess, Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo and author of Digital Media Ethics, 3rd Edition Good teachers uphold moral purposes of education in their practice. Teachers can come to know how to extend the moral purposes of education in sites of digital learning from this book. Based on an ethics of responsibility for others, this research disrupts the often corporatized and instrumental designs of digital spaces. Bellavance's Digital Moral Framework is a gift to teachers who are seeking to understand the ideological purposes of education in changing times. Glenn Auld, Senior Lecturer, Deakin University, Victoria, Australia Dr Bellavance has raised his voice in a unique way to rejuvenate the spirit of moral codes within our preteens and adolescent people. This is a high time where this area should be far more focused than any other. As educators, we are seeing so many behavioural and moral problems in a society because the educational curriculum is solely focusing on an outcome and not on a process. His work seems to resolve the issue to a great extent through his excellent work on cyber-ethics and moral behaviour. Hena Jawaid - School Counsellor - Minaret College, Victoria, Australia"