Week 5 part two: Trend

Summery: An interactive white board seems pretty self explanatory right. It's just a white board that you interact with. Well that's half right it also a projector and touch screen computer. It was made to make the life of a teacher easier, only problem is that very few educators know how to use them or actually utilize all their features. 

Interest: I had the opportunity to use a smart board when I was doing my student assisting. All we used it for was basically projecting Powerpoints and presentAtions and I got to sit close to the students  and didn't have to get up to change the slide (most of the time). We also used the draw feature to keep kindergarteners and first graders busy when they finished a project early. To say the least we didn't take full advantage of this useful tool, but even now I wouldn't know exactly what to do with it in the art room. I would be interested in learning more about it because I believe that it could be VERY useful. 

Affects: Interactive whiteboards don't have a large affect on the art education world that I know of, but I have seen videos and blogs on different ways that they have been used to better a classroom. I'm excited about the possibilities but skeptical about how much it could actually be used in the art room other than projections. I know that they are very UDL friendly though and I think that for lesson introductions or even presentations all students benefit from the easy accessibility of the information. 

Week 5 part one: Issue

So the Issue that I was assigned was Identiry theft, and with the constant advances in technology and the shifts towards everything becoming digital the risk of identity theft is only increasing. Identity theft is defined as; the fraudulent acquisition and use of a person's private identifying information, usually for financial gain. This means basically some has stolen your most personal information and is using it for their own benefit. The Bureaeu of Justice statics reported that an estimated 17.6 million Americans were victims of identity theft in 2014.  (They haven't calculated all of 2015s yet)  I think that it is important for students to be aware of these situations because there have been cases where hackers are getting their information by breaking into school databases. PBS has an really cool information page set up that I feel would be really useful for teaching students. It's located here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/education/2014/10/four-ways-to-help-students-avoid-online-identity-theft/ 

Personally I believe it to be at a High School comprehension level, but I did enjoy the fact that the videos were helpful and interesting/engaging.