Choices of Conduct
The third precept in the PTD theory explores choices of conduct or the character development of students insofar as the choices they make in their everyday use of technology. Bers’ discusses the developments students engage in as they advance their own sense of character and while the district’s technology plan offers many opportunities for content creation, creativity, communication, and collaboration, the plan lacks the opportunity for students to develop a moral compass or ethical choices. Throughout the youths’ development, opportunities testing character, moral purpose, and a sense of responsibility are often issues faced not only in the physical world but in the use of technology.
Character and choices of conduct can often be overlooked or kept separate from a technology plan as in the UCPSD’s twenty-five-page multi-year technology plan. Absent is any mention of student or faculty conduct regarding risky technological behaviors either identifying, defining, or prevention. Absent too are the consequences one might expect to find in a plan for a public school district. The lack of specific content regarding expected character, norms, or ethical behaviors are explicitly addressed by school board policies contained in the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). Worker provides another look at Bers’
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Through trial and error or experimentation, in fact, the rules are made clear as are the consequences. Constricting student choice by providing a playpen versus a sandbox approach to choices in PTD. Bers postulates that choices should be driven by self-growth and societal improvement (2012). UCPSD’s technology plan does offer opportunities for communication and collaboration, aspects of social improvement that directly relate to one of the tenets of social justice in character development and drives the student’s choice of