Blog Post 2

I have used MS Word to write many paper as a student.  Almost every paper from college has been written on MS Word, as well as creating a practice AP Lang test for rising juniors as part of an assignment.  So, with that experience, I’d say I’m proficient in MS Word as a student and a future educator.  I have seen teachers use Word to teach lessons by editing a document that the whole class is working together on, or to illustrate a point for the whole class to see.  They would do that instead of writing on the projector or the white board and it was easier to manipulate than something that is had written.

In my English classes, the teachers do not necessarily buy all the readings that we do in class, some of them just come from the internet.  You can find many pieces like Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” in its entirety on the internet without having to pay for the rights to it.  Same thing with some videos shown in class.  They come from YouTube or educational sites and they are public and all copyrights are reserved by the owner, which is not us.  We are just the consumer under the fair use of materials.  As a future educator, I plan to be careful around the rules and regulations and own what needs to be owned in order to utilize it in the classroom and avoid any infringement and illegal issues.

One of the bigger implementation issues that teachers face is academic honesty.  Stopping students from just copying and pasting Wikipedia pages as their papers.  There are programs out there that can detect plagiarism and duplicated papers to prevent cheating and copying in the classroom.  On such program is Turn It In and I plan to use one such program for online assignments to prevent academic dishonesty.  Another issue is what the district allows students to access on the internet.  I know that some sites are blocked even though they may sometimes be helpful for certain projects or assignments, so I want to be able to provide access to some of these in the classroom in the form of print outs for specific articles that may aid in the learning process.  On the large and ever-growing issue of cyber bullying, I want to make it clear at the beginning of the school year that it will not be tolerated within my class.  As a teacher, I know that it mostly happens outside of school, but if I can put a dent in it by discouraging cyberbullying with reports to the office and other punishments, then I am doing something right.