As a teacher, copyright law may seem unimportant or limiting in a classroom setting, but it's important to set an example of academic honesty to the students. I see myself making my own teaching materials, especially in presenting PowerPoints, as this skirts the issue of fair use while also allowing me to personalize and jazz up class. I have fond memories from K-12 of teachers using untraditional methods to capture student interest, like using relevant songs, memes, or in-jokes during class. These helped all of us memorize material and kept us engaged, and they stood in contrast to premade presentations, which were usually a bit boring. It was interesting to learn that there's a face-to-face schooling exception to copyright.

Academic dishonesty is worrisome to me. I grew up before AI was widely used by students, so I feel a bit unprepared to catch that form of cheating when it occurs. In community college, I had one teacher who responded to this problem by only holding in-person written assessments with no access to technology. She would give us prompts ahead of time, so we were able to prepare, but we wouldn't be able to rotely copy from Wikipedia or an AI generated response.

The assignment for the Newsletter Design didn't exactly teach me new skills so much as it revived skills in me that have long gone dormant. In middle school I took a class that taught me how to use Word, but most of the formatting skills haven't been necessary for basic essays or notes. It was fun (and a little frustrating) playing around with the layout; I struggled a bit to evenly space the paragraphs and visuals without resorting to several different font sizes and spacings. I also made some choices for the sake of the assignment that I think function as a demonstration of skill but don't necessarily make a newsletter more comprehensible or cute--I wouldn't, for example, use a header AND a banner on the same small document; or limit the range of colors if I new that the newsletter would be distributed electronically as a PDF. I also think I've become spoiled by Canva, which has more user-friendly options to play around with formatting. Having these skills will give me a fun way to connect with students and parents.



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