Blog 3: Issues That Come With Technology

While technology provides an abundance of resources to the average individual, it brings issues along with it. Two solutions that have rose due to technology issues are copyright and fair use. With resources easily accessible, it is not uncommon for individual's to use other's work and fail to give them credit for it. Copyright serves as an effort to protect one's work. It provides the individual with exclusive rights to use and share the work. Copyright laws have a big presence in classrooms. There have been many professors and instructors that I have run into that refuse to publish their powerpoints on Canvas due to others selling their work. Other times, students use others' work and submit it as their own. As part of the Copyright Act of 1976, the Fair Use was established. Fair Use is a set of guidelines that permit individuals to copy materials for nonprofit educational use, to an extent. Fair Use guidelines are extremely useful in a classroom setting for teachers to gain resources to enhance lessons. As a future educator, I believe it is very important to educate the students on such policies and issues. I am a firm believer of lead by example so therefore, I will ensure to give credit to those who deserve it while encouraging my students to do the same. By putting a strong emphasis on this at a young age, I hope to eliminate this problem slowly.

Technology does not just result in issues involving resources. Implementation of technology brings many problems along with it. Two problems that occur are academic dishonesty and cyberbullying. The entire country was moved to remote learning for almost a year due to COVID-19, which caused many of us to perform tests and quizzes online. When talking to most students, ranging from middle school to college, many of them admitted to using resources in order to take the exams. This is not an uncommon issue. In fact, it occurs more frequently than it should. Another form of academic dishonesty that is not uncommon is having other students take a test or complete assignments for another. Some teachers and professors have turned to proctored online exams, however it does not solve the issue. Students have still figured out ways to use resources with proctored exams and continue to partake in academic dishonesty. To prevent academic dishonesty in my classroom, I plan to take it old school again. Have students complete assignments on paper and in person. Technology will still be used to help enhance the learning environment, since it does have many benefits, however my classroom will not rely on the use of technology for the completion of assignments. Cyberbullying is an another problem that comes with technology. Before technology was a reliance in our every day lives, schools would see verbal bullying in the hallways or outside of the building. However, not that there is a platform where students can verbally abuse or harass students behind a screen, bullying has become a much more serious issue. When a person is behind a screen, it is easier, for lack of better words, to say something hurtful to someone because you are unable to see the immediate effect and emotion on the victim. To prevent cyberbullying in my classroom, it will be clear that there is no tolerance for any sort of bullying. I take bullying very seriously and I will try to create a classroom that builds strong relationships amongst all peers through collaborative assignments and group work. 

After completing the first assignment of this class, the newsletter, I learned a lot about working with Microsoft Word. Some things I learned include how to get creative with the software. I inserted columns and special headers. I also used WordArt and clipart to add creativity to the newsletter. Although I was happy with the outcome of my newsletter, I could have improved on the content. It was a little difficult trying to come up with information to write on the newsletter without actually having lesson plans to base it off of. However, I do think that this is something I would like to carry into my future classroom, and the skills learned can also be carried into my classroom in forms of lesson planning, classroom decor, and even activities. Below is a copy of my newsletter: