Blog Journal 1

I believe that what influences teachers to use technology in the classroom is its convenience. Technology is created to help people who are using it to do new things in a more effective way. Therefore, teachers are influenced by it in order to incorporate it into lesson plans for instance as well as assignments for students. When it comes to students, they are influenced by the use of technology in the classroom by being more interested in learning through it. Even though this may not be true for students in general since not everyone is as intrigued about technology compared to others, it is still considered to be a big aid for students in their learning process.

While analyzing the ISTE standards for educators, a standard that I found to be meaningful was the Leader standard. This is because I believe that it’s very important to advocate for access to educational technology and learning opportunities to meet the diverse needs of all students. However, a standard I found to be outside my current skill set would have to be the Designer standard. This is because I feel like it would be difficult for me to create original learning experiences and personalize them with the use of technology.

Being a digital native means having a relationship with technology at a young age. In my opinion, I don’t agree with the label “digital native” for today’s youth because not everyone in the youth category is accustomed to technology for many reasons. Some of these may be that they were not raised in an area where technology was widespread during their young ages, or their parents probably didn’t give them the opportunity of adapting to certain types of technology either. Differences that I’ve seen between how myself and most of my teachers use technology is when it comes to social media. After graduating from high school, I’ve had connections through social media with some of my previous teachers. For example, I have noticed that a lot of them post information about educational events, while young people like myself post about what goes on in our lives besides education. The differences that I anticipate between myself and my future students in terms of how I use technology is that I can hopefully be able to meet their diverse needs through it since not every student has the same level of familiarity with it.