Blog Journal 2

As a student, for many years I have been using Microsoft Word to write essays, assignments, schedules, and so much more. There is not one day that goes by that I do not use this. Since the third grade, I had attended a computer elective up until the eighth grade. In those five years, I learned a lot more than just how to type an essay. MS Word can be used for absolutely anything! Personally, I use this application for taking notes in class and writing assignments, as well as essays. Teachers use MS Word for the same activities students do, but with a different purpose. Teachers may use it to create quizzes and exams for their students, just like we did last class in our Formatting assignment. Along with quizzes and exams, teachers may also use MS Word for Newsletters for the students’ parents. They may be paper copies or a digital PDF that is sent out to the parents and students. Microsoft Word has only advanced, and in the next few years who knows what other opportunities MS Word will have for students and their teachers! 

All my life, I have learned from textbooks, power points, and assignments. Copyright is a very serious issue, and still today, many teachers may not even realize they're partaking in this issue. Many documents and photos are easily accessible on the internet. Teachers in the past have copied photos and pasted them on power points, documents, and exams. I would never think anything of it, but this is a copyright issue. Unfortunately, it is merely impossible to stop everyone from associating with copyright, so there must be a way for certain things on the internet to be less accessible. As a teacher, I would try my best to use original work. I know it is easy to take things from online, but since that is copyright, I would work very hard to stay away from the work of others. I think it is always best that students learn to create their own work and I believe that having students work in groups is a vital learning method, because they will bounce ideas of the other and create uniquely beautiful ideas. This is a great way of having students create their own, original work in the classroom. It is critical that teachers teach their students about copyright issues in America and what they can do about it as students. This allows the students to become creative and stop relying on the internet for every piece of information. Thinking “outside the box” is the alternative for copyright issues. It is important that students know how to keep their work to themselves. Sharing completed work to help another student is never the answer. Protecting one’s work is the first thing a student should learn when writing an assignment. It is very common for students to share work, which is why it is promoted to write your own work. As a teacher, I would speak of this quite highly, as I have shared work back in high school to help my friends when it ended up hurting me in the end. This is just one example of many that may occur in and out of the classroom. Our students should always be aware of the harm that copyrighting may cause them, as well as our teachers. 

Technology implementation issues have become prevalent in society today. Academic Honesty is the first thing we, as students are made aware of at the beginning of the school year. Whether it’s in middle school, high school, or college; academic honesty has always been explained to the students by their teachers. What I would do in my classroom to prevent dishonesty from occurring would be to promote the importance of honesty in the first class. I would spend the whole first class implementing what it means to be honest in the classroom, whether it may be no cheating, plagiarism, lying, and respecting the policies upheld by the school or university. When it comes to technology, students must be aware of logging onto sites, and what is and is not permissible. In terms of privacy, every student has the right to protect his/her own work. Technology can affect the privacy of others regarding E-mails, files, and especially hackers. Hackers specifically, because these people are trained to discover all the private things one may have on their electronic device. In the classroom, it is important to teach the students to turn on their privacy settings, as well as keeping passwords and other private codes to themselves. Privacy ties into cyberbullying in relation to what we post online and the access others have to our information. Our information should be confidential, but due to users such as hackers, there is much less privacy online than in past years. Cyberbullying has become more and more popular over the years and it threatens other users online. In order for hackers to have less access to our information, teachers can implement the importance of privacy policies. Any document, message, or website can be accessed by these hackers, and to keep their students away from such activity, teachers must make sure that students to not merge databases with other online users and follow all other policies that keep one’s private information private! With students being online all day long, it is beyond critical that students are made aware of these privacy issues, and this is up to the teachers, considering students are in school most of the day as opposed to their own homes.