Blog Journal #3

 This week we learned about Copyright and Fair Use. Copyright is when you have the right to copy the work of another, in the form of images, written works and studies, as well as films, documentaries and music. This right is given to the person who creates whatever media that would be copied as well as those who received a license from the creator to copy said materials. Fair Use is similar to Copyright, only the person using the material does not need to receive approval from the creator to use the material. I expect to use materials where Fair Use is applied because in schools you will not always have the opportunity to get approval from a creator of a book, or a piece of art, or a film that you would like to include in your lesson plans. 

Two issues with implementing technology in the classroom are Academic Dishonesty as well as Lack of Funding. Teaching students from a young age about Academic Dishonesty is important because it is something that students will have to keep up with for their whole educational career. Teaching students how to properly cite sources is the first step to get students to not copy off the internet without giving proper credit. Some students might plagiarize without realizing because they are unaware on the conditions of creating citations. A good way to deter students from plagiarizing is to use a software like TurnItIn, these sites make it very easy to identify when academic dishonesty has occurred. Lack of Funding is another issue when it comes to implementing technology in the classroom. If a school cannot afford to have certain technologies available to the staff and students, it could limit the amount of productivity and availability of different teaching methods that teachers would use if they had the option. 

While making the Newsletter, I learned different ways to format a Word page as well as use text boxes to shade certain areas. I had a difficult time uploading the banner I made and making the whole Newsletter flow. On multiple occasions I uploaded the banner and it would mess up the columns or my columns would write over the banner and it would put the whole page out of order. While playing around with Word I got a better understanding of how it works. In the future I will probably try to find a nicer looking border for my Newsletter.