Academic Honesty

When I hear the words academic honesty, it brings to mind being a person of integrity when it comes to our school and studies in school. Having integrity involves being honest and doing your best work all the time. Being honest involves always making sure to do your own work as a student. Our work must be our own; if we use something from another person then we must give credit where credit is due. As a future educator I will have the responsibility to not only be an example of academic honesty, but I will also need to teach my students how to be academically honest. How can I expect my students to be honest in their work if I do not let them know my expectations for them, with respect to academic honesty. It is very important for students to be academically honest; if o one teaches them, then they may try to cheat their whole way through life. I to be an educator who holds my students to a standard of integrity and honesty in all they do.

Cyberbullying

With the growth and spread of the Internet, cyberbullying is also becoming more prevalent in the virtual world many of us take part in. I would define cyberbullying as the repeated harassing, humiliating and/or threatening through the use of a virtual device (e.g. Internet, phone and computer). Students all over the world are harassed every day through social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

Cuberbullying is very demeaning and detrimental to the person being bullied. It lowers the self-esteem and self-worth of the person(s) being harassed. As an educator, I must be willing to teach my kids to use the Internet correctly. This ties back in with digital citizenship, and so I found some sites that would be very helpful as you teach your students about cyberbullying and why it is wrong.
http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/talk/cyberbullying.html
http://www.internetsafety101.org/cyberbullying.htm
http://www.isafe.org/

Digital Citizenship for Teachers

In an earlier post, I wrote about how important digital citizenship is, and so this will be the baseline for what I am going to talk about. Teachers are no different than their students when it comes to digital citizenship; the teachers must be good citizens of the digital world just like the students they are teaching. Teachers must be examples for their students in the digital world. If students see their teachers being porr citizens, then they will follow that example.

As a future Christian educator, I must realize the importance of really monitering my digital citizenship. Christ calls us to be in the world but not of the world in Romans 12. I am representing Christ in all I do here on the earth, even in the digital world of computers and the Internet. I must do my best to practice being a good citizen of the digital world; in this way, people will hopefully know something is different in my life. This will give me an opportunity to share the gospel and Christ's love to them! I hope my behavior in the digital world as well as in the real world will reflect Christ in my life.