This week in class, we learned about how to safely store student’s personal information online using the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) along with copyright policies for teachers as content creators. Something that stood out to me was that as an educator, we need to make sure that all student information is stored within Canada. Certain companies such as google have a data base in the United States, so we need to be mindful about which platforms we use to keep students information protected. We also talked about social media as a tool in the classroom and how we need to be mindful of student’s safety. If there is ever a reason why a student’s information may be disclosed on an online platform, we must have written permission from the parent and student and explain to them why this is important for education. If they do not give consent, we must think of alternative activities for this student. This could be a difficult thing to navigate in the classroom if some students have permission while others do not. As a teacher, it will be important to think about how to be flexible and accommodate lessons and ideas to make sure that each student is safe. However, I also think that this gives opportunities to give the students more choice in how they want to show their learning and what platforms interest them.

We also learnt about copyright information and how to use other people’s content and images in a way that still honours them. We need to always be aware of giving credit to content creators whenever we take something that is free to use online. There are awesome websites such as “Unsplash” and “”Pexels“that have great high quality images that make it really simple to give credit to the creator. Another great website is “Teachers Pay Teachers” which is a resource where teachers can share their teaching resources and other teachers are able to purchase those learning resources. I think this will be a very useful website as a new teacher. Something that I didn’t realize before is that whenever you make or share online content, there is automatically a copyright, so if you want other people to have access to it, you have to add a different copyright licence such as creative commons, so that other people can use it legally with your permission.