Texting and Driving, Informing our students!

"What is the Internet Doing to our Brains"

       Even though the internet could be beneficial and is not a distraction for some people, I believe that the Internet is changing our brains. Just as Nicholas Carr has researched, the internet is causing us to become superficial, or shallow thinkers. As we engage in certain tasks, we continue to allow distractions such as a twitter video, or a text message distract us from the task at hand and at times not completing it on time or not at all. The internet creates an information rich environment and encourages compulsive behavior to where we have to constantly check our phones and the internet to seek new information, ideas, people, etc. As we continue to get distracted by the internet, information store in our short memory domain never reaches our long term memory and we lose it. 
      Personally, I do think the internet is changing our brains. Our reliance on the internet only continues to make us robotic seeking new information but never learning it or storing it for later use. I continue to see people around me on their phones at a date, with friends or in the classroom, including myself. As technology advances, our fascination with it increases, new apps are being made, more news is going on in the social media world, and phones are continuing to advance. In conclusion, the internet is changing our brains but if we find time out of our days to focus at tasks at hand without distractions, the internet will be an asset and not a distraction. 

Copyright & Fair Use: have you asked permission?

              Copyright is when someone's work is marked as their own and grants them rights to their work. In copyrighting, you must ask permission to use the work if you are trying to use someone's work for something such as teaching a lesson. Fair-use is when work is not copyrighted and you are able to use the work freely without fearing trouble.
           Copyright is very monitored in today's schools. Copyright can be ranged from music in lessons being only for educational purposes or copies only being for one student at a time. Originally, I did not think that copyright had much to do with education and the classroom setting, I really only related it to movies, music and other media. Now I am more surprised and even aware that it goes into the classroom and is a serious matter. I feel like it is important to educate teachers, students and administration to be able to avoid it and know what is appropriate and what is not.

Podcasts: How to integrate Podcasts in a lesson