Web 2.0

I learned a lot of new, very interesting, information about some of the ways we can better education. The wikis are the most important to me. I think it is cool that instead of emailing back and forth you can have one wiki where everyone can go and leave their own input on whatever the specific topic is. In classes, especially, you could use it for group projects or homework assignments where the class could go and find out certain things about the project or assignment. Technology is so important to the classroom and I really love that classes have become so involved with wikis and the internet and smartboards. Students these days are used to having the internet and computers at their dispense. It is almost easier to involve technology than it is to try to get students attention without it.

Copyright

I have learned quite a bit about what is acceptable and what is considered copyright infringement or not acceptable. Those websites actually have pretty useful information on them regarding videos, audio, and pages on the internet. As students we should all know by now what is and is not okay to use as far as plagiarism goes but copyright and fair use is a little more in the gray area. I will admit that I am guilty of not going through the necessary process or taking the correct measures to ensure that I am not violating any kind of law. If I need to put something in a blog or in a powerpoint I usually do it the easiest and least time consuming way. I assume everyone probably does it like that or at least has done it like that in the past.

I'm sure there is more information on the internet machine about this topic than I could read in a lifetime, however, I am actually kind of glad I got to read up on this matter a little bit. I obviously don't know the exact "rules" of using media in the proper way, but now I at least have a jumping off point. I feel a though some of the lengths that people have to go through to keep themselves legal are a little extreme. However, we live in an imperfect world and things are much more difficult and time consuming than they should be. Do I think it is okay to pirate something off the internet and then pass it off as an original copy? No. Do I think that if I am a registered member of youtube and want to put something into a powerpoint or a blog I should have to go through a meticulous process to do it? No. There is a fine line when it comes to the internet and luckily now I at least have something I can reference when I am trying to go about the correct way of doing things on the internet.

MAPping

I pretty much knew how to search the internet and find what I needed previous to the MAPping activity. Most people who grew up in my generation are pretty well versed when it comes to search engines since we have been using them for most of our lives. When it comes to school work I use Google for just about every thing I research. You type in what you need to know and the more precise you are when you enter a search the more precise of an answer you will receive. Not exactly anything new there.

MAPping is fine too, I guess. Not really anything super new there either. MAPping just associates multiple elements into a given set and can give you a more concise search. Overall if you were to teach MAPping to students when they started learning about searching for things or websites and programs that would probably be the way students searched for things and did things. Mostly unnecessary though,

The way I learned to search for things was to bring up a search engine like google or askjeeves and type in what I wanted to know and look for an answer that closely matched my search. Usually search engines have a very broad arrangement or websites or answers to the thing you first searched for. However, the interesting thing is that most likely the thing that will be at the top of your search is probably what you are looking for since it relates most directly to the key words that were entered in the first place. All in all, I think I am just going to stick to my simple one word Google search.