Blog Post #2
As a student, I have used Microsoft Word to write papers, take notes, read syllabi, type reports, and many other little assignments. My most vivid memories of teachers using MS Word include when my AP English Literature teacher would type out paragraphs from good essays on MS Word and project them on the screen so that we could read along with her. This way, she protected anonymity, which would be a little harder if she just used the Document Camera to show the actual hardcopy of someone’s essay, because either their handwriting could give them away, or she may accidentally show the name of the student. This way, we were less concerned with whose paper was on display, and more concerned with learning from their successes or mistakes. In Chapter 9, I was interested to read about the newspaper assignment that a history teacher used for his elementary school class. I think the assignment would really help immerse the students in the topic, and help them understand and memorize details as well as major themes in a work. If students are encouraged to put themselves in a situation, in my case, perhaps putting them in the shoes of literary characters, they can interact with the material in a more meaningful way. It might stick with them better. I also like the idea of using and recording the readability statistics throughout the year so that students will be able to track their writing growth.
As far as my experience with copyright and fair use in school, I have noticed that in English classes my teachers have given us photocopies of certain stories from anthologies or collections of books so that we can annotate the stories as we read. This has been very helpful for me as a reader so that I can really focus on what story I am reading. As a teacher, I would make sure that I was allowed to photocopy certain things from certain books to make sure that I protected the integrity of the works themselves. I would also make sure that my students also respected copyright laws in their assignments and how they write or complete projects. I would spend time at the beginning of the semester to go over copyright laws and plagiarism with the students.
While working on this week’s assignment, I learned how to effectively and quickly arrange images on a page, as well as how to quickly correct any spacing issues using the numbering outline style. Further, I learned how to place text on both the left and right side of the page in a header or footer, which I had always struggled with in the past. I liked having the opportunity to make a little quiz, because I know I will have to make them in the future in varying degrees of difficulty. It was nice to remember how to place a fill in the blank typed question into a quiz, because now that I know how to do that, I will not have to spend time playing around with that feature in the future. I liked choosing pictures for the question where we had the option of inserting images for students to choose from. I did not like playing around with the indentation at first, because I had to use the “undo” function multiple times to get things right. All in all, I enjoyed this assignment. Maybe next time I’ll try to figure out how to do a matching question.
A screenshot of my quiz
Cmagia 
I’ve had similar experiences with MS Word as a student. I also really liked the newspaper idea too and plan to use it in my future classroom! As for the assignment, I agree that the indentation was annoying at times when numbering.
I have used microsoft word for the exact same reasons, and I really liked how your teacher used it. It was definitely a smart idea.
I think the assignment was really helpful as well! Even though it was basic MS Word skills, it was still good to practice them. I left the matching question off too, though, so I should probably figure out how to get that done!
I used MS Word for the exact same reasons in high school! I also remember my teachers projecting paragraphs for the whole class to read. I like your idea of giving out photocopied stories for the students to annotate on their own. I feel like that helped me a lot.