Blog Journal #3

     Copyright and fair use are both laws that exist to uphold the standards of intellectual property in the United States. These laws protect individuals who have "copyrighted" work and can be used to harm those who use their work. Personally, I believe intellectual property laws are bad and feel like I have been learning about them since middle school. For me, I like to think about the idea behind intellectual property laws more holistically. Intellectual property is nothing more than a way to attach a profit incentive to an idea. I propose two scenarios. In scenario A when there is a global pandemic different scientists representing different organizations and corporations all take their hand in creating a vaccine because they know their intellect was going to be protected post-vaccine creation. Protection in this scenario means they are able to profit off of the vaccine and none of these "competitors" can work on their vaccine. This creates competition so that the market creates the best vaccine and people now get to profit. In scenario B when there is a global pandemic there is no intellectual property. What happens? all of these competitors now become a team of scientists that work together to make an effective vaccine for the people. This pushing away of "competition" actually creates innovation as the efforts are more centralized. Scenario A is the status quo, we are pushing away innovation with competition. This can be applied to all intellectual property. in terms of copyright, it serves no other purpose than stopping educators from putting resources into the curriculum. Unlike with vaccines though, fair use protects the use of copyrighted material in an educational sense. This is good, but it is still upsetting to me that this exception is made because the material impact of intellectual property actually causes damage. I would do my best to provide and use free and public resources to students that exist within the educational community but are often a maze to access. Students creating their own work would have to be something I learn to adapt to but being as that I intend on teaching on a collegiate level most of the work they would use would be protected under fair use. 

    technology implementation issues have existed since the implementation of technology in the classroom. The two issues that I will be discussing today are student privacy and lack of funding. Starting with student privacy. We currently live in a time and place where everything we do is constantly surveilled and students are no different. Ensuring that student's privacy is protected is of the utmost importance. Students are future leaders and the next generation of workers. Knowing that they were protected in the school system will have a spillover effect when they are employers or employing those in the future. Secondly, is a lack of funding. Unfortunately in our current system schools are funded based on property taxes meaning schools in lower-income communities will subsequently have fewer resources. This spills over to technology down to the fact that there are schools that provide kids with a school laptop whilst there are other schools that have one computer cart that teachers struggle to reserve. Overall both these problems come down to systemic issues within the United States education system 

    The Newsletter Design assignment was not only important but got me excited about the sentiment of becoming an educator. I became familiar with some of the more creative features of Microsoft Word and was able to create a newsletter that I was happy with and met the requirements. I could improve my newsletter with a better understanding of how to format it in MS Word. At times I was struggling to insert something as simple as an image. The skills I learned can be displayed in my career in that I could send students newsletters or create assignments within Microsoft Word.