Wordle was our mini-lesson on February 13th. Wordle is a fun website that helps you create “word clouds.” This website would be good for students to use to add a meaningful text based graphic to their project. Students can copy/paste or type a significant amount of text, such as a paragraph for example, or selectively choose just a few key words to use. Wordle would be a good tool to have students create a visual poster of words to describe themselves.
I’ve never used iGoogle before this class. I had fun customizing it and adding Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, NPR news updates, Youtube search, weather and a few others to my page. I am impressed with the ease of use, and the ability to customize it to include all of your favorite websites, email and more. There are a variety of backgrounds and layouts, allowing you to make it visually appealing to you. I will continue to use iGoogle because it acts as a homepage, kind of a “one stop shop” where I can access all of my frequented sites from one page.
During class we discussed Acceptable Use Policy. According to about.com, an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) is a “written agreement all parties on a community computer network promise to adhere to for the common good. An AUP defines the intended uses of the network including unacceptable uses and the consequences for non-compliance. You will most commonly see AUP when registering on community Web sites or when working on a corporate intranet.”
An AUC contains information that is relative to computer security, such as managing passwords, policy on stealing/downloading music/movies, copyright, fair use policies, licenses, and intellectual property that is found online. “Interpersonal etiquette” and “overuse or misuse of resources” is covered as well. I think that it is important for computer users in a school or work environment to know where to find the AUC, and become familiar with its contents. The AUC can help answer common questions about changing passwords for example.
We also spend some time discussing plagiarism. According to Wikipedia, plagiarism is when you take another author’s “language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions,” and present them as your own. Rick shared two situations that he encountered while teaching, where students plagiarized on an assignment. One student completely copied a travel brochure that he found online, and attempted to use it as his own. Rick quickly suspected the student of plagiarism, based on the wording and vocabulary that was used. After a Google search, he found that unfortunately the student had taken existing work that was not theirs.
Punishment for plagiarism varies depending on the severity and intent of the student. Students and children are taught at a young age that copying is cheating and not allowed. This is an important message that parents and teachers need to help children understand and reinforce the importance of being creative, coming up with your own ideas, and giving credit to others when it is due. As a future art teacher, my students will be looking at other artists work for inspiration. Even at the high school level, I will make it necessary for students to site and give credit to any photo other artwork that they use as reference. During my experience working in Admissions, visiting hundreds of high schools, I have found that many teachers only allow students to use their own photographs as reference for their work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
No comments:
Post a Comment