Blog Post #3

I would deal with copyright and fair use as a teacher by ensuring that any time I got instructional material from someone else, I would ask for permission to use it. Similarly, if I was using the material as inspiration, but not using it exactly as the creator did, I would still make sure that I got permission or used it fairly to avoid copyright issues. As for my students, I would educate them on the problems with copying someone else and address it if I catch them copying something, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I plan to teach kindergarten students, so I do not think that copyright will be a significant issue in my classroom, but I will address it if I come across it. What I learned this week is that just giving credit to the creator of the content you used is not enough for copyright, but you actually have to get permission. I did not realize this was the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement. 

For this, I choose to discuss decreased productivity. I chose this because it was an issue at my elementary school when I was younger; we all had laptops and it was common for students to spend instructional time distracted by playing computer games instead of doing their work. This led to the school banning certain games from being played, which upset the students and made them resent the teachers, especially because it punished students who were not playing games at inappropriate times. I would handle this situation differently. Instead of banning the game all together, I would propose that we find a way to ban it for certain periods of time, sort of like a "screen time" restriction. This way, when students have free time and are allowed to play games, they can still play them, but they will be unable to during instructional time. If this does not work, however, and the students find a way to take advantage of it, then I would resort to banning the games all together like my elementary school did.