Strengths & Weaknesses

There are a lot more things about technology that I do not know very much about than I thought. I always felt very comfortable with technology and computers. Most of the questions on the survey I answered novice or apprentice. Mostly because practitioner deals with writing lessons that help students understand the concept. I have never taught any student these things. As a teacher though, I do plan to teach my students about technology for what is appropriate at their age level. I understand how to install software and access programs in other drives I feel like the only reason I would not consider myself more than an apprentice is because I have never taught students about these things. That is how I feel about all most of the apprentice ones I gave myself. There still are more things I would like to know and get more familiar with though. The biggest thing is the copyright laws. I know about them, but I am not as confident as I would like to be. I feel that I obey the copyright laws but when I start doing more things with technology, it will be harder to make sure I am doing everything I need to. Also, I do not know enough about the adaptive assistive devices for students with special needs. I would like to learn more. Also there are so manyaudio and visual devices that I would like to learn more about, along with multimedia and graphic organizer software.

I chose the Copyright Crash Course Online Tutorial to help improve my knowledge on the subject to help me feel more confident about the stuff I use. It shows you how ownership of copyrighted materials works, what is fair use and when and how to get permission to use someone else’s materials. There are links to pages in the Copyright Crash Course and to the copyright law. There is a 12 question test that you take at the end of the tutorial in order to earn a Crash Course Certificate. I would definitely feel more comfortable with using other people’s work if I know I am obeying the copyright law. There are so many resources you can use from other people, you just need to know how to get the permission and how to give them credit. This information is very important for teachers to know when they are getting lesson ideas from the internet.

I also wanted to do the Grolier Online Tutorial. Grolier Online has two interface. One is Grolier Online Kids for children in grades 3-5 and Grolier Online Passport, is for older students and adults. There 50,00 different websites you can go to and a few hundred thousand magazine articles appropriate for students. There are multimedia presentations, interactive atlas, and dictionaries. This is a great place for students to research. This tutorial shows you all the things you can do on Grolier Online. If you do this tutorial you will know what is available for your students. So this would be an advantage for me. I will know the possibilities of what this website is good for. It is definitely something that would help me out in teaching world.