Word on the Street

Today we are talking about my favorite computer function: Word Documents! As a student, Word documents are my life. Not only have I used Word to format and submit essays, but it is my personal favorite way to take notes in class and create to-do lists.  Throughout high school and college, most of the assignments I was given were created with MS Word. Every flier and take-home permission slip was a product of MS Word as well. So, teachers rely very heavily on this application because it is accessible, easy to Most notably, when I was enrolled in online school, I was often sent word documents to be filled out like a worksheet and sent back to my teacher. Nowadays, I see teachers leaning more toward interactive documents, like Google Docs. But, MS Word is the undisputed king of the education world.

As we shift towards interactive documents and get more comfortable with online sharing, academic honesty is  often called into question. Right now, I often come into contact with online applications which automatically seek and highlight plagiarism in academic papers. But, even those applications are often faulty. Applications can’t understand the intricacies of quoting, paraphrasing,  and analyzing in-depth texts. Also, as a student the consequences for plagiarism are incredibly harsh. In high school, I was often threatened with administrative repercussions for any paper with over 25% of application-highlighted plagiarism. So, I would actually propose taking it to the opposite extreme with students. Dividing the class in two groups and have one group demonstrate exactly what not to do, and having one try and effectively paraphrase quotes is an interactive way to generate understanding of plagiarism rather than fear mongering.

Another topic I’d like to address is copyright. It’s okay to copy, right? WRONG! In education and in the arts it is extremely important to verify that the media and information you’re using is free for public use (or that you access the correct avenues to use it). However, I think that copyright law is very interesting. So, my proposed solution is to make students aware of copyright limitations by sharing and debating some notable cases. This can be really engaging for students because copyright laws often impact celebrities and notable people. For example, music artists can get caught in a copyright suit for using beats and recorded tracks without the consent of the creator. So, by introducing copyright laws as a juicy, fun, debate, I propose we can make students more aware of how these laws could impact them.

Whenever you have technology in the classroom, you have to deal with problems of cyberbullying. Especially through social media, cyberbullying can negatively impact students at any level. How do we combat this? While we can not regulate what happens online outside of the classroom, educators can take steps keep cyberbullies out of the educational sphere. First, creating an environment where students feel comfortable speaking out about problems they are having with teachers and administrators is crucial. If students can trust you, they are more likely to ask for help. Helping students recognize what cyberbullying can look like, talking about the relationship between social media and mental health, and just checking in with students regularly are easy ways to do this. Second, when using technology in the classroom ask students to create profiles with their names. Reducing anonymity will reduce the risk of cyberbullying because it asks students to be responsible for their actions.  Lastly, have a clear course of actions for when these problems arise. Establishing peer remediation, clear consequences, and understanding your jurisdiction as an educator will make handling cyberbullying less confusing.