Blog Post #2

As a student, throughout my K-12 years I found Microsoft word to be an extremely useful tool in my learning development. Especially in the higher grades such as middle and high school; I was using Microsoft word all the time. Typically, I used Microsoft Word when I had to write a report for one of my classes or sometimes even as a spell check database that helped to correct my grammar before I turned in any assignments. Whereas my teachers would use Microsoft much more often than I would almost every day because every worksheet or print out that they would give us used word to create it. I believe that out of all the software’s that are included within Microsoft, Word is the easiest for both teachers and students to figure out. For teachers Microsoft word is a tool that can assist them in teaching in the most effective manner.

    Within the past twenty years, the school systems have started to incorporate so much more technology than ever before. With this newly incorporated technology comes the ability to come across or even copyright material yourself whether you mean to or not. Personally, I do not find it that difficult to not copyright another person’s work, all the student must do is cite where they got the information from. If an idea is not common/ basic knowledge and was not throughout without any help than that information needs to be cited properly. There are so many ways to cite information and give credit to the source that everyone should be able to find one that meets their style. Taking outside information from various sources helps to strength the argument that you are making. From an educational standpoint using other people’s information to make the argument that you are making stronger is okay if there is citations and credit being given to the original author.

   As a teacher dealing with the issue of copyright, for their students there needs to be clear guidelines that go over the amount of uncited work or what should and should not be cited. Especially when doing a multi-media project there are of course going to be a lot of outside resources being used. If the information is properly being accredited and cited to the actual source this is fine. When talking about essays and including in- text or out of text citations to avoid there being an issue of copyright should clearly be expressed to the student. Teachers should stress the importance of giving credit to the actual source when using outside information to their students and if they follow through with that there should not be any issues.

   Considering the Implementation Issues that take place within the classroom many of them could be fixed or prevented with the help of a teacher. The purpose of implementing technology within the classroom is to use it as a facilitating device for student learning in every aspect, socially, ethically and legal diversity as well.  Nothing is every perfect and as with implementing technology inside of the classroom, there are going to be issues. However, I do not think that these issues should prevent children from being able to use technology. Instead I think teaching both the teacher and the student to use technology in the correct manor is the way to go. If teachers and students were to use a laptop and social media outlets in the right way and for educational purposes cyberbullying may not be as big of an issue because it is being used for the right reasons. Some teacher may attempt to pirate movies to show to their classes, which in most cases may be inappropriate movies to be showing to students anyway. If teachers or schools would purchase educational movies or subscriptions to movies that are approved to be shown in school this would not be as big of an issue. Teachers would then be setting a good example of the renting/ barrowing movies system to their students instead of doing something illegal.  By promoting citations and giving outside sources accreditation for their work, students would be promoting freedom of speech and academic honesty. Students would be able to say whatever they want to say in the correct manor that it would not be hurting anybody's feelings or breaking any rule. I believe that by making citations a bigger part of the English classes in middle and high school this would solve a lot of the issues that we are having.