Blog Post #3

     Copyright and fair use are two very important things when it comes to using technology. Copyright is a protective tool that writers can use when publishing works. This can be for music, books, blogs, research papers, and more. It makes sure that anyone who wants to use your work has permission and sites you. It gives credit where credit is due, and can prevent a lawsuit. Fair use is utilizing a source in an appropriate manner. There are rules for fair use, including you can only use a small portion of the source, expand upon its ideas, make it have a new meaning, and you can not use it for profit. For example, using a source in a research project for school and then expanding upon the material. As a teacher, you should understand these two words. If I find a worksheet online that I would like to use for instructional purposes, I will need to check who owns the document and pay for it as needed. If the school receives testing practice material, I will not make copies without payment. If I do, it infringes on the copyright laws and the school may be sued. I may decide to use instructional materials I found online as a guide to create my own. I believe that you can learn a lot from other teacher's instructional methods; however, I would not try and steal their work. As for my own students, I will teach them about these two words. EME2040 linked a youtube video to explain the definitions so we could learn, and I think it was a great video to show in the future. The main goal is for my students to learn the material, not copy things off of the internet. I will make sure my students understand the importance of copyright and fair use. They can use materials they find on the internet to help them understand and/or guide them through the assignment; however, it needs to be their own unique thoughts. 

    Two technology implementation issues that I would like to discuss are Academic Dishonesty and Decreased Productivity. If a lockdown browser is not being used for tests and quizzes, students can easily open another browser, split screen, and look up answers. I have learned that Canvas has a feature where you can see if the student exited the browser, even if it is not on lockdown. However, if you are using another testing site it may be hard to stop students from cheating. Another portion of Academic Dishonesty is plagiarism. If a teacher does not utilize a source like TurnItIn to check plagiarism, a student can easily just copy and paste an assignment from the internet to submit it. This causes a lot of issues within the classroom because students are not truly learning. They are not applying the information they learned to complete assignments, quizzes, or test. A solution that I would use to solve the Academic Dishonesty issue would be utilizing the lockdown browsers and TurnItIn for online learning. I would also ask questions on tests that requires applying the knowledge my students learned. This way, they would not be able to look up the question and find a simple answer. TurnItIn checks for plagiarism, and I would tell my students that if the percentage is above 10% then we are going to have a private meeting to go over their work. Since the group of students that I will be teaching is younger, I do not believe I will run into too many Academic Dishonesty issues; however, I like that I have a plan in place. As for Decreased Productivity, I think this is a major concern now that our world is mostly online. Students are getting more access to technology at a younger age, and it can be rather distracting. If the students have a TV show, youtube influencer, or application that they really enjoy, they may try to use their computers to view those applications. This is difficult when trying to teach because students will be more focused on trying to find their applications rather than the lesson. Fortunately, many school internets block unapproved websites. My solution to this problem would be to make sure that students are using school internet and to attempt to keep most lessons on the projector/smartboard. This way, students are looking at the screen in the front of the room and I can watch to see if students are looking down. I would call on those students not paying attention to answer the question. Again I will be working with elementary students with Intellectual Disabilities, so I do not think any technology implementation issues that I am discussing with be super difficult to control. I have my solutions that I will implement into my future classroom as a safety net to keep my students academically engaged and learning. 

    I really had to think about what the most important information was when working on my Newsletter. I like to explain things, but I often tend to ramble. This Newsletter made me be precise in what I included. I have also never used the columns feature in Microsoft Words, so I definitely gained a new skills from that. I had to restart my Newsletter three times because my columns kept moving around. I figured out that I had to write my sections as mini paragraphs, and then put them into columns. It was definitely frustrating at first, but now I know what I am doing. I think I could make my Newsletter more fun in the future. I saw some examples online that were really fun and would fit for an elementary school teacher Newsletter. I am still learning how to be proficient in Microsoft Word, so I definitely wasn't able to add as much creativity as I like. I think as I continue to use the program, I will be able to do more with my Newsletters. The skills I learned can be used in my future career when I need to make a Newsletter for the parents of my students. I can also use these skills to create fun worksheets for my students. Microsoft became a lot more simple to use once I started playing around with the different tools. I can make tests, worksheets, graphics, newsletters, and so much more. This assignment made me a better user of Microsoft Word, which will definitely help me as a Special Education Teacher. However, I believe there is still a lot more for me to learn about Microsoft Word before I utilize it over other softwares. 

Below is my Newsletter Assignment :)