Blog Journal 8

     Throughout the creation of my website, I worked diligently to try to discover every possible resource available to me through the site. I primarily focused on the principles of CRAP to make sure my website was accessible and easy to read for all potential parents and students. In doing so, I made sure to use contrasting colors and keep a consistent white background throughout the pages on which I could lay dark or colored text. I also heavily considered alignment and repetition when formatting my website as I felt ensuring the text was well organized was very important in making an overall accessible and understandable design. I loved the creative freedom and time I was given to create the assignment, as I found it very enjoyable to freely change and move text, graphics, and other useful elements. I only struggled with the restrictions Weebly placed on theme changes and disliked the difficulty I faced when trying to format images and text in the ways I wanted at first. However, after growing familiar with the Weebly platform, I feel as though I will likely use it in my future assignments and career as creating a website containing newsletters, student assignments, and personal contact information could help ensure my students and their parents are well-informed and prepared to succeed in my class. 

        In the future, I think it would be interesting to create a QR code scavenger hunt. During this activity, students would walk around their school or classroom, finding and scanning multiple QR codes in order. After scanning the codes, I would give my students games, puzzles, or quizzes to complete that allows them to move to their next icon. I think this would be an interesting way to incorporate digital literacy standards into the classroom in a fun, informative, and engaging way. 

LaMech's Proposed Ethical Dilemma

Case: You’re teaching an 8th grade English unit on narrative writing. The goal is for students to learn how to craft vivid characters, strong settings, and well-paced plots.

Plan: You decide to use a generative AI tool (like ChatGPT) to help students brainstorm and outline their stories.

Prompt Creation: You create a prompt for the AI: “Generate three short story ideas set in a world where time travel is possible but illegal.”

AI Output: The AI produces three creative scenarios. You share them with your students, who choose one and develop it into their own story outline.

Student Interaction: Later, students can refine their outlines by asking the AI for help with specific elements—like “suggest a better opening sentence” or “help me describe a tense chase scene.”

Teacher Oversight: You emphasize that AI is a writing coach, not a ghostwriter. Students must submit a final piece that clearly shows their voice and choices.

Ethical Dilemma: After grading the stories, you notice that several student submissions include AI-generated sentences nearly identical to those in the brainstorming phase.

    Personally, I do not believe the students should be punished for the completion of the assigned work using AI. Instead, this problem would best be solved using a class discussion in which both the students and teacher discuss an outline of acceptable AI usage, creating clear rules for future work. Because of their age, this assignment was likely one of the first lessons students received with assigned AI usage. Knowing this, I believe it would have been beneficial to clearly outline rules regarding AI usage before students were given the final assignment. In the future, this problem could be extinguished by requiring students to clearly disclose and credit any AI assistance within their work, or by moving to hand-written assignments if the problem continues. This would be an ethical solution as it acknowledges students' wrongdoings while also using them as an advisable moment regarding plagiarism, boundaries, and voice.