Blog #3

Hi everyone,

Welcome back to my weekly blog. This week I am going to start out by talking about my experience on MS Word.

Microsoft Word was brought into my life around 5th grade or so, I began becoming fluent on my parent's desktop. My friends and I would play on Word with WordArt, different Fonts, Colors, Bold, Italics, and more. This at home-learning pretty much taught me the basis of MS Word. When I went to middle school, I began using it for short stories, and small pieces of writing. In 7th grade I had an amazing Language Arts teacher who brought me into the world of English and publication. I had to write longer essay's by then, and I even started composing short stories of my own! In 10th grade, however, I started having to write 10 page essays or so for AP Language Arts, and I really became familiar with the proper structure of essays and started learning about the pre-made formats that Word has to offer; MLA, APA, Resumé Templates, etc. I think I am at my peak with Word, as I continue to learn more about it through my Public Relations Internship, and my collegiate career. I've learned spacing importance, how to align margins, how to put pictures where I want them, and how to effectively use MS Word.

Fair Use is extremely important in the classroom. When showing certain films in the classroom, or using certain Copyrighted works for educational purposes sometimes educators are protected by The Fair Use as long as the works being used are for educational purposes. I think it is important to discuss Fair Use in the classroom v. Copyright. I remember when I was in high school a student shouted out about the teacher using a Copyrighted work, and she informed us that she was protected by Fair Use. Ever since then her explanation and this example helped me remember the two. I think Copyright is important in the classroom because it is also possible to Copyright another student's work.

The most effective method to preventing this is having each student sign an Academic Honesty Agreement before each assignment stating that the work they are turning in is their own original work, and if not they will be treated as if they Copyrighted a published work. I think this adds the proper severity to the matter, and also leaves no grey area to where someone could say "well, I didn't know".

Cyberbullying can be prevented in the classroom by making the classroom and school itself a "no social media zone", by not allowing social media at school. I think each child should also sign an agreement at the beginning of each semester stating that they understand that if they are found cyberbullying another student outside of school, it will be handled by school administration, as if it happened on campus.

Regarding the digital divide on campus, I think some students may have more digital access than others. If a student at home has 2 iPads, an iPhone, a desktop Mac, and 2 Smart TV's, while another is living with a desktop Dell computer, they are going to have different knowledge on some things. I think when doing things like "stations" in the classroom, implementing 4-5 large desktop Macs would help students who don't have as much digital connection at home, start to get a feel for things like surfing the web, MS Word, Powerpoint, and more,


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