Blog Post #3

    Copyright and fair use in the terms of the age group I'm looking to teach (1st - 3rd grade) is going to look more on me and my responsibility as a teacher. Making sure I'm using my own work, or appropriately using someone else's idea with permission/payment, is going to be essential to make sure I'm not in violation of any copyright laws. There are resources and spaces where teachers can share their lesson plans, assignments, or other ideas for the sole purpose of letting other teachers use them, and if I needed ideas those are a resource I could use. As far as the students go, because of their age they will have less access to other people's work in the classroom, and won't really have the opportunity to copyright it, however making it a lesson and explaining both the importance and consequences of copyrighted work may be necessary. Most of their work in the classroom I will be overseeing and making sure it is original work, but it is still important to give them an understanding so they are also doing original work at home. 

    I think as far as academic dishonesty, it
would be helpful to let the students know exactly what the consequences would be if they were caught, and what the benefits will be if they turn in original work. In a younger age group, they aren't as well versed in the different ways to cheat or copyright. I think the biggest issue that I've seen with this age group is copying a friends work, or having a friend pr sibling do their work for them. This is typically easily discerned by a teacher, but when I was in elementary school the teacher's made it very clear that if it were caught, there would be academic consequences. After that there was less of an incentive to cheat for fear of consequence. I think in older age groups the opposite approach has worked better in my experience. There have been teachers that will give extra credit points or make it part of the assignment to cite sources specifically, instead of just expecting it to be done. There was one teacher that gave extra credit if you could prove it was your own work, as opposed to AI. A lot of students in those classes took those points and were doing their own work because of the increased focus on grades. 

    From the newsletter, I learned a lot about the functions of Microsoft Word and how to navigate it. It was my first time using Word for a project and I was able to figure out how the operations were similar to, and different from Google Docs, which is what I am most comfortable with. I did make the mistake of using word through the browser instead of using the desktop version, which created problems when trying to download it as a docx. or a pdf but it was still a goof experience in learning the platform. These skills are definitely going to help be in both my academic future and the future of my career by giving me experience in MS Word so I'll be fairly proficient when asked to use it. I think in the future I could improve the newsletter by working more with colors and fonts to make it more aesthetically and visually pleasing.