Blog Journal #3

     Copyright has to do with intellectual property, and how the creator of that intellectual property has the exclusive right to distribute, sell, and use the property in any legal way they wish. This usually has to do with some type of creative work that a person has created with the intent of distributing their work to the public. Copyright protects that person from others who would steal, sell, and pawn that original person's creative work as their own. On the flip side, fair use is a set of laws that protects a person who would use copyrighted work. Fair use applies only under special circumstances, which includes parodies of copyrighted material and using copyrighted material for educational purposes. As a teacher, I would emphasize the use of sourcing copyrighted material, as well as discussing the laws surrounding fair use and especially the Creative Commons license. I would also offer various avenues when using copyrighted material, such as how items in the public domain can be used without a source or any extra steps. When creating my own instructional material for a class, I would follow the proper laws surrounding copyright to show my class an example of what following copyright laws looks like.

    There are a variety of technology implementation issues, but I think perhaps the two most important ones to deal with is academic dishonesty and cyberbullying. When dealing with academic dishonesty, I think the two programs I would most rely on are Honorlock and Turnitin. Honorlock records the screens of students while they take a test on the computer so they are unable to use the internet to cheat on answers, and Turnitin checks papers for similarities to other work to ensure nothing has been copy and pasted. As far as cyberbullying goes, this is a much harder issue to deal with directly, however, there are many steps I would take to hopefully deter and discourage this practice. Firstly, I would make everyone in my class sign a document stating that they will not participate in cyberbullying so everyone will know the consequences upfront if they decide to cyberbully. I would also try to make a safe space in the classroom as to encourage people to not only be kind to each other, but to come forward if they are on the bad side of cyberbullying. 

    After completing the newsletter assignment, I feel that I have a better grasp on the Microsoft Word and it's associated tools. Since I am more used to Google Drive, it took a bit of time getting adjusted to the different UI and tools. I feel that I have a better grasp on using the column function, the table function, and the insert function. I could've added a full shaded background to the paper, and I had difficulty properly formatting some graphics, so in the future I could work to improve in these two areas. These skills can definitely be applied in the future if I become an educator, such as when I format tests, papers, activities, and possibly more newsletters!