Blog Journal 3

 I think that self identity is a very powerful and important thing for humans. It is something that is crafted by you over your lifetime - consciously and unconsciously. When I was younger I used to abuse the internet for its knowledge. Teachers wouldn't know... looking back at it now, it's entirely likely they just didn't care. After years of introspection I realized that copying stuff is not what I wanted to do. And the stuff that I did copy acted as an overall disservice to me. This is other people's work and effort, not mine. Copyright is to not only to maintain ones own intellectual property legally, but also point people to better information. We live in an age where people hear something and type it out to the internet for the whole world to see. But it gets muddled like a game of telephone. Eventually it becomes inaccurate. With a copyright, the more than likely truer version is the only version. However there is also fair use. This is different. Instead of using the originals work verbatim or paraphrased, you are using it in a transformative way. In a way that is uniquely your own. This could be using it verbatim with other things, or juxtaposed to something, or altered in some quality. No matter what you do with it, the final result and message must be significantly different than the originals.  

Cheating has become more rampant than ever. In almost every class there is a sort of "black market" for homework or test answers. Especially now during quarantine when tests are offered at various times. At the end of the day it is the teachers responsibility to make questions that are hard to cheat on. Do not use questions from a text book or from online sources where there are bound to be answers for. If I were to become a teacher I would design mainly short answer/ test questions. I think that these questions should be complex and integrate a variety of substance from the course so that even if they could cheat it would be hard to do in time. But you cannot just make your tests harder. I would also instead of using a 0-100 grading scale opt for the 50-100% scale. In terms of decreased productivity, there is really a simple solution. The internet is a very powerful thing. But, as the saying goes: "with great power comes great responsibility." I have found that to get work done I must turn off my internet. I can take a picture of the resources I need and I can type without it. I believe this should be adopted in classrooms. There should be time allotted to gather resources and time to work on your own project. This also instills a good  work ethic. 

I felt pretty good about my newsletter this week. I wish I had took the extra effort to look for more appropriate pictures and worked on the spacing a bit more, but other than that I thought it turned out well. It was also a good refresher on how to use microsoft word. I forgot where things like word art were because I hardly make anything on word for multiple people. I am still not sure what I will be doing in the future but, I do enjoy communicating to an audience and these skills could go towards creating visual pamphlets like this in the future.