Honesty is the Best Policy (BJ 2)

As a student, Word was heavily focused on for learning how to use it in my technology classes. When I was younger, I would use it to print out pictures or practice paragraphs. As I grew up, Word grew up with me by becoming more accessible, more technologically advanced, and provided more tools to create more than just an essay document. I have used Word to write papers, to create activity sheets, to make flyers, and to make checklists. Moreover, I have seen my teachers use word mostly to create tests and quizzes. Word allows an educator to keep a very organized structure, and teachers can change a part of the document with ease, so most of my teachers have used Word as the go-to software. Also, my earlier teachers used Word to create worksheets for the elementary class setting. Again, the software supports a structured document, and it is relatively easy to use.

Being the editor-in-chief of my high school yearbook, I ran into a lot of copyright issues when trying to add graphics to pages of the book. My staff and I would try to use clipart images off of the internet, and we would get pages from the plant get sent back to us for editing because of the copyright. As a result, the advisors ended up purchasing a pack of clipart images that we could use, which helped smooth processes. As a teacher, I would find a website, like the one we used, that had pictures that were allowed to be copied, which is explicitly stated. I had teachers give us websites like this when I was young, so I know that there are some out on the web, but I am not sure of a specific website.

• Academic honesty: To avoid academic honesty, and assuming I am a teacher at an elementary school, I would teach my young students how to cite sources and keep all the citations in one place. By teaching them how to do this at a young age, by the time the students were older, avoiding plagiarism would come naturally. If students forgot, which is bound to happen, I would remind them, maybe have a lesson on it, and have a makeup assignment that the students would need to do in order to receive full credit of the original assignment.
• Cyberbullying: Cyber bullying can be a major problem with younger kids because sometimes they don't even know that they're bullying due to it not being in person. To avoid this, I would do a lesson on cyberbullying, a proactive step, before the students were able to use the internet.
• Digital divide: The divide of students who can and cannot access technology or the internet is very real in today's society. Before I began any lessons or teaching with electronics, I would send a letter home to the parents, asking if they had access to technology. If no one says no, then I will implement technology wherever I see fit. If some students do have trouble, however, I would offer opportunities to fulfill the assignments either during class time or before/after school, corresponding with convenience of time. For example, if a student doesn't have access to technology at home, I would have the internet assignments due in class, with class time to work on it, and then send paper homework home. This way, every student would be working on the some thing, and the student wouldn't feel singled out of the group.