Blog Post #3

1.    Microsoft Word has been a very important part of all of my schooling. While in Elementary School (K-5) it was very rare that I would use any sort of technology on my own. There were the occasional assignments that needed to be created, however they were heavily guided by parents help. As I have gotten older I have found myself using not only Microsoft Word but other software’s a lot more. Especially once in high school, it was expected for you have access to a computer or to find a public one to use. I never knew much about how to use Word, but once entering college, I have found myself to be quite comfortable with it. As for teachers, they often have used it to create worksheet assignments and exams. Other than that, I have never been present for much understanding of their use of it. As I take this class, I expect to learn more about how teachers use it.

2.    When I was a young student, it was honestly hard to grasp the concept of copyright and what falls in different categories of plagiarism. Once I started writing research papers in high school, I took the time to better learn the rules and regulations. Now being a Junior in college, I heavily understand the seriousness of this and how to prevent myself from copyrighting.  As a teacher, I would always make it clear how important creating your own work is and how to give credit if you are citing someone. This will all depend on the age of the student. If you were teaching young students, you could only teach so much, as they are first learning to grasp the concept of education.

3.    Academic dishonesty: Academic dishonesty is something students need to learn about at an early age. As a teacher, you could use technology to teach children how to check their work for plagiarism and how to correctly cite and give credit to authors. There are many websites, such as turnitin, that will show what has been taken from another source, and how much is your own work. Learning this would be very helpful for all of school and in their future careers. If you found students in your class plagiarizing their work, you could give them another chance to complete the assignment or give them a zero to teach a lesson.

Decreased productivity: With the impact that technology has, it could easily become a distraction that no teacher wants in the classroom. With all different types of technology at one’s reach, it is hard to stop the cycle of decreased productivity. To begin, a solution to this issue could be to stop students from using computers for note taking during the lesson. Not only is it believed that you could learn more from writing your notes, but this would prevent using your computer for distracting things. You might also want to have them put their backpacks at the front of the room or on a wall. This way it is easier to catch them using their phone and to prevent them from grabbing for different products in their backpack.

I commented on Mallory and Olivia's post. I enjoyed reading both of their post and will take a lot away!