Copyright, Fair use, and Technology Implementation Issues

Copyright is when someone has protection for their intellectual property. Having copyright means that person has full rights to use and distribute the copyrighted work.  If someone else wants to use all or some of the work, they must give proper attribution and/or have to pay the copyright owner. Fair use is a part of copyright and allows users, within reason, to copy materials for nonprofit educational purposes. This is mainly dependent on how the work is used and how much of the work is used. As a teacher, I would try to develop all of my own instructional material strictly based off of standards and try to use as little outside resources as possible. When necessary, I would try to rely on the textbook provided to my students for information and correctly site and paraphrase from it. I would encourage my students to try to create their own works without relying on the internet or textbooks. When necessary I would provide the needed sited materials for my students and give them the correct citations so they would not violate copyright and fair use guidelines. 

Technology is an area that seems to continuously have issues inside and outside of the classroom. As technology grows, it creates many great opportunities for students to advance in their learning. However, it also allows for issues such as academic dishonesty and decreased productivity. Academic dishonestly can be prevented through systems such as honor lock and having testing proctored or on pen and paper. Technology has also led to decreased productivity in students. Many students believe that technology makes their lives easier and allows them to copy and paste and not have to do as much of the work. I think a good way around this is to have students complete assignments on paper and take a picture to submit! Another way around this problem is by creating in class assignments that have creative components that get students excited about learning and make them want to do the work!

Working on the newsletter assignment was surprisingly fun and introduced me to many new concepts that I was unfamiliar with. Word art, making a banner on Canva, and creating a end banner to come up with a t-shirt order form were all concepts that were new to me. In the future, I feel like I could improve my newsletter by learning about more techniques and creative aspects to make my design more appealing and fun to look at. The skills that I learned in this assignment can be used in my future as an SLP as I design worksheets for my kids and communication sheets to go home with parents.