CEDO 520 Week 4

Another Class down, I don't want to think about how many more I have to go. This class has been trying for me as much of the class was rooted in a time where I was not only attempting to complete my assignments for this class but also running a high school softball program, trying to finish up the school year in my "real job", and work with a new puppy I got for hunting this coming fall, not to mention maintaining my marriage. It's done now though and it's off to summer and more time to work on things the way they need and deserve. If not rambling and complaining so let me begin with our coverage of Week 4.

We were asked to begin with an assingment regarding copyright, fair use, and creative commons but this was the last assignment I did as I hate copyright and don't understand an ounce of it. I procrastinated way longer than I should have on this because the assignment scared me and I really didn't want to do it. Once I got into it though, I actually learned some things and found that it wasn't nearly as difficult as I was anticipating. I can't really say that I understand the copyright or fair use parts any better than before as they are still so vague and sparse. I did, however, get the opportunity to learn about Creative Commons licensing and this was pretty awesome. I had never heard of Creative Commons before this class and I find it to be the first common sense approach to copyrights that I have seen. I think this will be a fixture for many years to come and as it gets more and more prevelant I do believe that eventually it will replace fair use and copyright all together.

Our second assignment was to right a blurb on Privacy, Ethics, and Security which I infact did, however, I am not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about it here because to me there really isn't much to talk about. I am not real scared of online banking, online shopping, or online theft because I think it is much easier to track a cyber thief than it is to track someone who has pick pocketed you or stolen your check routing information. I'm not someone who spends his life in fear and this is certainly another one of those circumstances where I just plain refuse to be intimadated or what have you. I am cautious of who I'm buying from and I keep track of my order information, however, that is the extent of my caution.

Our third assignment was the Safe Internet Use for Children. I spent a lot of time putting together a presentation for this assignment so again I'm not going to spend a lot of time rehashing it here. I found it interesting that several articles reported that the statistics for child enticement were greatly overblown. I always kind of thought this until I started seeing all the "To Catch a Predator" shows and they kept routinely pulling guys in. After seeing several of these episodes and their effectiveness it made me think that according to the law of averages, there must be one heck of a lot of predators out there. Many of these reports stated, however, that the numbers were indeed overblown and that in fact it was child harassment that was the more important issue. Overblown or not, the severity of the crime attached with child inticement is enough for me to put it at the top of the list. I learned some great ways to prevent these issues and will in the future pass these along to my students and their parents.

The final assignment was the Second Life assignement. In this assignment we were asked to create a SecondLife account and enter at least 2 of the sites provided to us. I personally entered all of the sights because I was excited for this program and it's uses. I found the program to be intriguing and very enthrauling for students, however, I was disappointed with it's implementation capabilities. I can't see ever using this myself for educational purposes and therefore I lost interest quickly after discovering the lack of benefit for my needs.

In the end, I thought it was a great class with a great teacher but unfortunately terrible timing for me. I enjoy playing with and exploring new technological tools but unfortunately I never had the time to really delve into these tools like I would have liked and that upsets me. I look forward to begining my next class and having a little more time to commit to it.