Please read the following stories: At school, time on the computer is almost up. The students are using the Internet at school to find resources for their paper, which is due in class on Friday. Michael finds the perfect web site, and copies several small portions of the text into his paper, so that he can get the information into his paper before he runs out of time. Michael feels that this is okay, because he writes the introduction and conclusion in his own words. Julie bought the latest PC version of the game, Civilization II. This game allows kids to create their own civilizations and empires, while playing and fighting with others. She loves to play online with her classmate, Beth. But while Beth has a PC, she has spent all of his money and can't afford to buy Civilization II. Since the game can be saved and played on the hard drive, Julie copies the Civilization game onto Beth's hard drive, so that they can play together. After reading each, please make a check whether you find the actions taken in the story are acceptable or unacceptable. Then please explain, why or why not?

Example scenarios developed by Bruce Burnam in his upcoming thesis project to investigate common dilemnas faced by children in school and at home.

Burnam, B., & Kafai, Y. B. (in press). Ethics and the Computer: Children's Development of Moral ReasoningAbout Computer and Internet Use. Journal of Educational Computing Research.

With increasing computer use in classrooms, there has been a growing concern of the resulting moral dilemmas that may emanate from their use. Though theorists have conducted extensive research on children's' moral development, there has been little attempt to situate this within the digital domain. This study reports on interviews conducted with 48 third grade and fifth grade students about moral dilemmas involving computer and Internet use. The results indicated that children's moral understandings fell into the expected developmental levels. Significant differences were found between children's moral reasoning in everyday situations compared to those involving computer use. However, gender differences were not consistently detected for all computer and Internet scenarios. These findings are discussed in light of Turiel's (1983) postulated domain dependence of moral reasoning and the gender differences found so prevalent in children's computer use. We conclude with considerations for school's policies regulating Internet use and potential training programs.

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