The concept of a code of conduct for bloggers hit the big time today (in terms of print media, anyway) with an article on the front page of the New York Times.
As many in the article, and elsewhere, note there is never going to be complete agreement on a set of ethics, even within the one small subset of the 70 million + blogs that is the edublogosphere.
But it’s important for all of us who do this to adopt a code for ourselves – just for ourselves – and make it clear to visitors what that is. Call it truth in blogging if you like.
Maybe the codes and associated badges being advocated by Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy Wales is one way to do that but I’m still not convinced.
However, for those of us who are educators, there’s a much larger issue in all this.
We have a responsibility to teach our students how to ethically, honestly, and safely publish to the web.
And one of the best ways to do that is to model the same behavior in our online presence.