Digital Blog C

As an artist, copyrights are my pepper spray to thieves. It is a protection from the United States for one's music, artwork, or writings(p.118). Copyrighting is basically having the rights that say a person owns the piece of work. If anyone else uses it in any way that the original artist does not like or deemed fitting then legal action can be taken. Although there is a thing called creative commons that say an artist keeps the copyright, allows it to be used as long as the credit is given to the author. I think that this is the best approach for use of teaching material. Credit should be given to where credit is due but as long as the it is used for education it should not matter. I am not saying that there is not the one educator who will claim that a lesson plan was thought of, created, and solely their own work when it was not but that is why we have copyrights. Being part of a band, I like to think that no one will steal our ideas. Although it would ruin someones life if they used or stole our music because guess what? We have copyrights.

Don't let this happen to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH44tHK5so4

Sometimes when I want to check a quick fact I will do a Google search and usually pick the Wikipedia link. Why? Mainly because it is usually the first result. Then after I check what I needed I click a related link from the original page to another and then another. 30 minutes later I am a page that is completely unrelated to what I started with. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that is online. There is a staff and volunteers that pick and choose which articles can stay and police the pages. They do this because pages can be revised or new ones can be made by anyone. Now some of the pages might be totally true but they can also be utter nonsense. Not going to lie: I have used Wikipedia to write papers because they have cited sources and related links at the bottom of the page; that is something more reliable and can be used. I like to think Wikipedia is more of a search engine, something that can give you a piece of information. It's just up to you to figure out if it is legit or not. Other online encyclopedias can be a more accurate source(Microsoft Encarta, How Stuff Works, etc) because they are written and edited by scholars (p.114-115).

One thing that I absolutely despise is Badware. It has ruined my past computers and laptops. Luckily the were all free or cheap and when I finally got around to buying my own decent laptop I had a buddy install software that stops pop up ads and such. Badware can also be called adware or spyware and it is a software that gets into the computer and takes control over it. It can redirect websites that you use and work against the software used to prevent invasive software (p.164). It really can be troublesome like when you are trying to do research and you get a million ads for President's Day sales or how to fix your credit.

So I have a question: Do you know how to prevent Badware? Click the link and let me know your answer!

Maloy, Robert, Verock-O’Loughlin,Ruth-Ellen, Edwards, Sharon A., and Woolf, Beverly Park (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.