Webcam Application
Friday, July 10, 2009
Webcam's being hosted in school
Webcams being hosted in schools
It’s possible that having seen the teaching and learning the benefits of webcams, teachers and students may wish to make their own use of webcams or web camera, perhaps to promote experiments to support classroom works. Schools considering hosting their own webcam should think very carefully about the issues that will soon arise regarding its usage.
First, schools must define precisely why they wish to use a webcam or web camera, what images they want to captured, and where the images will be presented. The answers to these questions should be considered because these would have a great impact upon the safety and management implications of hosting a webcam in school.
If schools were to use a webcam or web camera to view non-human subjects or shall we say objects, for example to view close-up images of a bird nesting in a tree in the school grounds, this shouldn’t present too many problems. The images should be displayed on the school website for general interest and purpose, and there would be no safety issues. On the contrary, if a web camera were used in such a way that it might capture images containing human subjects, whether students, staff or visitors, the school must exercise extreme caution for fairness purposes.
There are many issues regarding privacy, and schools should have the duty to inform people that a web camera is in operation. Many schools operate an opt-in system of parental consent to include images and digital video of students on school websites and the same principles should be applied to webcam activities and policies. Schools should consider also how they can ensure that students whose parents have withheld consent are not inadvertently captured on the camera.
Displaying web camera images of students on a publicly available school website could present a real risk to safety. It allows identification of individual students, but there should be a real risk of attracting unwelcome interest, from pedophiles for example. In addition, as the images are effectively real time, the schools have no control over what are being broadcast via its website. It may be more appropriate to use a school intranet, or a machine which can only be accessed locally, for broadcasting web camera images if they are likely to add images of students.
It’s possible that having seen the teaching and learning the benefits of webcams, teachers and students may wish to make their own use of webcams or web camera, perhaps to promote experiments to support classroom works. Schools considering hosting their own webcam should think very carefully about the issues that will soon arise regarding its usage.
First, schools must define precisely why they wish to use a webcam or web camera, what images they want to captured, and where the images will be presented. The answers to these questions should be considered because these would have a great impact upon the safety and management implications of hosting a webcam in school.
If schools were to use a webcam or web camera to view non-human subjects or shall we say objects, for example to view close-up images of a bird nesting in a tree in the school grounds, this shouldn’t present too many problems. The images should be displayed on the school website for general interest and purpose, and there would be no safety issues. On the contrary, if a web camera were used in such a way that it might capture images containing human subjects, whether students, staff or visitors, the school must exercise extreme caution for fairness purposes.
There are many issues regarding privacy, and schools should have the duty to inform people that a web camera is in operation. Many schools operate an opt-in system of parental consent to include images and digital video of students on school websites and the same principles should be applied to webcam activities and policies. Schools should consider also how they can ensure that students whose parents have withheld consent are not inadvertently captured on the camera.
Displaying web camera images of students on a publicly available school website could present a real risk to safety. It allows identification of individual students, but there should be a real risk of attracting unwelcome interest, from pedophiles for example. In addition, as the images are effectively real time, the schools have no control over what are being broadcast via its website. It may be more appropriate to use a school intranet, or a machine which can only be accessed locally, for broadcasting web camera images if they are likely to add images of students.
0 Comments:
