Blog Journal 4

I haven’t had any early experiences using Twitter before enrolling in this class, since the social media tools that I do actually use are only Instagram and Snapchat. However, now that I am using Twitter, I’m starting to get the hang of it by tweeting, retweeting, replying to tweets, creating threads, and following others. Lately, I have been interacting with my classmates as well as other students who are in this Introduction to Educational Technology class. I have found it beneficial by reading the experiences they go through during this class with the assignments they are completing that are similar to mine. Twitter might be helpful in my future career by possibly using this same method for the students I will be teaching to allow them to communicate with their peers in the same manner.

The digital divide is a term used to explain the great differences between students who don’t have the same accessibility to technology. The digital divide affects student success in schools in many ways, with one of them being completing school work. If certain assignments require using technology that they are not able to reach, this can hinder their possibilities to succeed academically. Some causes of the digital divide may be if a student is a minority who comes from a very low-income family that doesn’t have the opportunity of being supplied with the technology they might need. As a classroom teacher, I may experience having a student in this situation; this will affect my teaching strategies by allowing me to take note of the adjustments that need to be made in homework assignments for example that would be advantageous for these specific students.

There are many academic softwares that are available for students to use and be engaged with during their learning process. One of the many software tools I would like to use in my future classroom is Google Classroom. This is a tool created by google to aid with communication between teachers and students, and I would like to use it with my future students because I’ve experienced how helpful it has been for me while I was in high school. Another tool I would like to use with them is Kahoot, which is a game-based learning tool where questions can be created for students to answer for reviewing purposes. I would like to use this tool as well because of the playful aspect it incorporates that would get my future students interested in learning.

ILP “Design” – Google Classroom

This is my first Independent Learning Project, and to start off I chose design. The tool that I used for this project was Google classroom in order to create an educational content. We have not used this tool in this classroom before, but I have used it previously during my high school years. It's very helpful for teachers and students to communicate with each other, and I can honestly say that I had a great experience creating the content that I made during this first project!

Attached is a link to the Voice Thread of my Independent Learning Project.

https://voicethread.com/share/13097841/

Blog Journal 3

Based on the grade levels I’m more interested in teaching which are in high school, one of the ELA technology standards I feel most prepared to teach with my existing knowledge would be making strategic use of digital media in presentations. I would be able to successfully work with this standard to teach others because I find it interesting when it comes to introducing new topics and having a better understanding of what has been found by presenting different types of evidence. Another one would be writing informative/explanatory texts, which I’m very knowledgeable of due to the fact that I’ve taken many literature classes that have helped me to be more of an expert about how to write well and present information clearly through writing. However, an ELA technology standard I feel requires more learning on my part is determining or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases. Improving my perspective of vocabulary is important in my opinion, but most times I find it hard to view words differently in order to give them more meaning; therefore, I would need to work more on this standard personally.

One of the resources in the CPALMS Educator Toolkit that I noticed was an original student tutorial about how a theme is developed in short poetry. This resource is basically about how themes are developed from different types of writings such as poems by having support from words and phrases that are included in them. I would use this resource in my classroom because it would help students to think more critically about the message being portrayed in a writing. I don’t believe that it’s enough to simply read something and not gain any deeper understanding about what has been read. Referring back to Bloom’s Taxonomy that we discussed in class previously, making analyzations and evaluations while learning is what I believe makes the overall process of learning more effective.

From working on the Newsletter Design assignment we were given to create, some new skills that I acquired from it are how to create borders around the perimeter of certain texts as well as how to divide a body into separate columns. I liked this assignment because it helped me to be more aware of all of the possible features that can be used in Microsoft Word. A way that I can improve it next time would be by making it more appealing by using even more of the features listed in the High Pass section that I didn’t fully take advantage of. Also, what I learned from the assignment can be used in my future career by creating additional newsletters that can be sent out to the parents of students in order to keep them updated about what goes on in the classroom.

Blog Journal 2

As a student, there are many ways that I have needed to use Microsoft Word. One of them is when I needed to type out essays for classes such as Literature, Diversity and Justice, and even in most of my high school classes. I have also used Microsoft Word because of the spelling check feature it has, which seems to be very helpful while I type. Before I submit an assignment on canvas that has to do with a discussion post for example, I would always type it out into MS Word in order to see if I have made any grammatical errors before officially submitting it to the discussion board. I have seen teachers use MS Word when it comes to creating a syllabus for a specific class. They have also used it for templates in order to allow students to fill them out as a worksheet as well.

During my years of education so far, I have had many experiences with copyright and fair use of materials in an educational environment. I can’t explain how much the importance of giving credit to those who have created sources has been stressed upon students like me by teachers. Because of this, I’ve learned to include citations when I use articles and other information as back up for my work. As a teacher, I would deal with these concepts and develop my own instructional materials by giving students the chance to familiarize themselves with websites such as Purdue OWL which would teach them how to successfully cite sources while creating their own work.

A solution that I could implement in my classroom in regards to the technology implementation issue of cyberbullying would be to play interactive videos about how this affects students similar to those in the classroom who are dealing with it. Once they were to see how harmful this is to others, they would realize that it shouldn’t be done and prevent it whenever they see it happen around them. When it comes to the issue of academic dishonesty, I believe that the best way to bring a solution to this issue would be to show the laws that have been created that show the consequences of doing so. I would also give examples of previous individuals who have had to face these consequences as a result of being academically dishonest. Seeing this would alert students and make them feel the urge to be even more careful when it comes to being honest in academics.

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.

Blog Set-Up

My name is Tarah Jean and I am a sophomore attending Florida State University coming in as a first year student. My hometown is Lehigh Acres, Florida, which is not commonly known by most people since it is relevantly small. I'm a part of the CARE program here at FSU, which stands for Center for Academic Retention and Enhancement. Through this program, I participated in the Summer Bridge Program over the summer, which was a wonderful experience that allowed me to prepare myself for this fall. I am also majoring in English Education since I have an interest in teaching and love to dance as well as spend quality time with my friends and family.

I have had a lot of prior experiences using technology in an educational setting. One of the main ones that I remember from my high school years is Google Classroom, which is similar to a physical classroom setting but is instead online. This was very helpful for me and other students in order to communicate with other pears, teachers, and submit assignments. Another use of technology that I encountered over the years is quizlet, which is basically a study guide that helps students to review material needed for a variety of different subjects. Through these technologies and many others, I believe that they have been very beneficial in the learning process of students and in the educational setting as well.

In this class, I hope to learn how to create different websites similar to the ones I have been familiar with. Since I have the desire of becoming a teacher in the future, this would be a great advantage for me because I would have the skills needed to help others with the knowledge I will be gaining in this class. In my opinion, technology is a useful source that is appealing to students and allows them to be interested in what they're learning about. I'm not only taking this class because of a requirement, but I am also interested in everything I'll be learning throughout it as well.