Copyrights!

This week in my instructional technology class I learned about copyrights and how important it is for teachers to be careful in how they use materials. I found it scary that if a teacher uses some sort of material wrongly they could be sued and even fired from their job. There acts could be seen as immoral.

There are so many laws and even though there is the idea of Fair Use, it is not very clear cut. Only the court can decide if your motives were consistent with the Fair Use law. In many instances, it may be best to simply buy material or ask permission just to be safe. There is so much information and material out there for teachers to use that it would be a waist not to use it. As teachers, we are able to use materials more easily because we are using it to benefit our students. It is still better to be safe than to be sorry.

YETC!

Today in my educational technology class, we learned about the many resources that are available from the YETC. I had been on a tour of the YETC, but today I think I learned so much more just how important and wonderful the YETC is. I didn't realize that there are so many resources available online for free. I really want to take advantage of as many of these things as I can.

I will definitely use many of the things we talked about today in my classroom. These resources will make learning so much more engaging for the students and a lot less boring. I really loved the ideas of the spellingcity, storylineonline, and stellarium. Spelling can now become fun and more engaging. Story time can be done through large pictures, read by celebrities that children are familiar with, and become more interactive. I am really excited about the stellarium because I am very interested in astronomy. This can be a great project or activity to do with students. I really enjoyed our tour of the YETC!

UEN! Great fun when it actually works!

So today in my educational technology we learned about and created an account on the UEN website. I think that this is going to be a great tool to use as an educator. I love that it has available so easy the core curriculum for each grade and different subjects. I also love all the videos and interactive activities that you can so easily access. Incorporating the UEN website into the classroom will allow students to be more engaged. This will really make teaching and planning lessons so much easier. There is now so much information and technologies and resources available to teachers. I am excited to explore and use it.

Education Assignment

So this is all very new to me. I have never had a blog before, nor have I had many experiences looking at other people's blogs. It is always crazy to me to see how technology and communication is continually changing and I sometimes feel that I am behind the times even when I was born in the computer generation.

So for my technology in education class, we had the assignment to create a blog. I think that blogs would potentially be very helpful to a classroom. I think especially blogs would allow parents to access student's missed or lost homework. It would also be a great way for parents to see what their child is doing in school and also make comments or questions for the teacher.

I think it would be very beneficial to have students have a daily journal that they can write on the classroom blog. This way they can not only see their own publication on a website, but they can also read and comment on their fellow students postings. I still think that traditional daily journals would be beneficial for students to practice their writing, especially handwriting skills. I would maybe have students once a week post a journal entry on the classroom blog. This way their stories or ideas can be posted for other students to see.