Imaging

The imaging assignment for this week was a fun project to do. It was a good way to learn several aspects of editing and posting images on the web. These skills will definitely come in handy either in our future classrooms or in some other aspect of our lives, whether it be designing a website for fun or for a project. I had never heard of Macromedia Fireworks before, but the program is very easy to use and can be useful for many different things. Other programs like Photoshop can often be very confusing and complicated for an inexperienced user. As future teachers, this type of assignment would be great for our students because they can share their own creations with their classmates. Whether it be personal pictures or research assignment visuals, knowing how to edit and create their own images will be very enjoyable for students.

Plagarism

Plagarism is a very important issue, especially in college. Plagarizing is something so serious that it can get someone kicked out of college! But how can teachers and professors get through to students and let them know just how important it is to do one's own work? I think the solution is to start encouraging kids to be creative and do their own work at a very young age, as well as informing them about plagarism (to some extent) in elementary and middle school. I think that if kids are informed about the seriousness of the issue early on in their school careers, they will be much less inclined to plagarize in the later years. I also think that high school teachers have to continue to stress the importance of doing original work. Websites like turnitin.com and the other sites like it are good ways to ensure kids are doing their own work and prove to them that teachers will find out if they do in fact copy someone else's work. One of my high school English teachers used that website and everyone in my class was sure to cite every single piece of information that they used in their papers out of pure fear of getting caught by Turn It In!

My first blog ever!

What to discuss? Well since we're all elementary education majors, I must say that as I go further into the major with more and more classes, I'm getting very excited to become a teacher. The different field placements are definitely reaffirming my desire to work with kids for a living. This technology class is adding a whole new aspect to what comprises an elementary classroom these days... I know I didn't have computers actually within my classrooms when I was that age! Oh, and the fact that such young kids are learning how to use computers and the internet is pretty scary! I feel like that will make them grow up a lot quicker with such easy access to the entire world..