Blog Journal 4

Last week was the first week I used Twitter for this course. I have mostly been interacting with @eme2040's tweets. I have been replying to their questions as well as reading responses other students have written to their questions also. Twitter may be helpful in my future career as a popular way to keep students updated on homework and assignments, or a simple way to get students involved in answering thought-provoking questions.

The digital divide can create a huge gap between students in schools. Those that have access to the internet are more likely to have the resources they need to succeed in school. Causes of the digital divide come from students' socioeconomic status at home. Those students that may be on the poor side may not have access to the internet or a computer at home. This could lead to them not being able to look up something for school, read articles, and more. On the other hand, the students that have extensive access to computers and the internet at home will have every resource they need to succeed. As a teacher this will make it difficult to create assignments all students have the resources to complete successfully. I will have to make sure I treat everyone equally. Maybe if the assignment is to read an article online, I can provide a handout of the article to those students that do not have access to the internet at home.

If I were a second grade teacher, the type of student software I would use the most is educational games. This provides a fun and entertaining way for students to practice the lesson so they will stay engaged and intrigued. The software type I would use the least are tutorials. Tutorials provide the learning content to students solely over the computer in a multimedia format. I would rather teach the learning content to students in class and give them a software to the material practice with. I feel that face to face interaction is important when first learning new content. This way the teacher can see right before his/her eyes what his/her students might be struggling with in case they need to provide further instruction or help.

Twitter

My EME2040 class Twitter is @EGreinerEME2040

Blog Journal 3

The ELA Standards I feel I am most prepared for include using multiple sources and using digital media. I feel that my work I've done for school has taught me about evaluating sources, how to paraphrase them, and how to include them in a project/lesson. I also feel that I could be skilled at finding media, like pictures, videos, diagrams, etc to put in a presentation and help get the point of a lesson or topic across. The ELA Standard I feel that requires more learning on my part include making multi-media informational text and literature. I do not have much experience including these skills in a presentation so it will take a little more work to get familiar with it.

I think using the internet to play interactive learning games, like Kahoot, and watch interactive learning videos are the top technology sites I would use in my classroom. I want to teach elementary school so these would apply to younger students, around ages 6-10. The digital citizenship concepts I will need to address include the need for them to demonstrate the technology skills needed to use the internet. At a young age they will need to know how navigate the web and connect to Kahoot and the videos. They will also need to participate effectively in the educational games/videos with the proper technology and communication skills.

The Newsletter Design assignment is an effective way to teach students a way to communicate with their class and class' parents/guardians. I learned how to create a top boarder and insert a line to be cut off as some sort of form. This skill can be used to send home important messages or describe what we have been working on in class to my students or their parents as a future teacher.

Blog Journal 2

I have used Microsoft Word extensively as a student since middle school. Most of my experiences using it come from school essays and assignments. These papers and assignments I have done for classes have given me the full and total skills to use and navigate around MS Word. Teachers also use MS Word for everything in school. All handouts, syllabus', assignment details, handwritten tests, and much more are usually created using MS Word.

I have not had many personal experiences with copyright or fair use of materials in an educational environment that I can think of. I have only seen copyright marks on the bottom of readings, books, and other learning materials I have used in classes. As a teacher, if I were to develop my own instructional materials I would definitely want to copyright them under my name so I get credit for my work. However, I would also like to share them with other schools and teachers under fair use if it related to their lesson and would help them teach their students more effectively. When it comes to students creating their own works, fair use is important. Students use copyrighted material to aid in their understanding of what is being taught.

With implementing technology in the classroom, issues definitely come along with it. These problems include legal, social, and ethical issues. As a teacher, when using technology in the classroom it is important to discuss all these issues with students and let them know they will not be tolerated. Three big issues I could see in my classroom are academic dishonesty, cyberbullying, and student privacy. A solution to academic dishonesty is to teach a lesson on plagiarism and cheating and make it clear that I will not accept it in my classroom. I will make my students aware that if they are to plagiarize or cheat they will get a 0 on the assignment and it will bring their grade down. When it comes to cyberbullying, any students engaging in this activity will be in serious behavioral trouble. Families and the school will get involved and hold meetings with those involved to put it to an end to it. With student privacy, any time information about a student is required to be shared I will have to send home a permission slip where parents/guardians must approve first.

Blog Journal 1

What influences teachers and students to use technology in the classroom mainly revolves around facilitating the lesson being taught/learned. Technology can be used in many forms like Powerpoint presentations and games that can help teachers teach more effectively and students learn more effectively. Technology in the classroom can reinforce a lesson, promote thinking, creativity, and communication in students, addresses diversity, can check a student's understanding of the material, and prepare students for all the technology they will use today in the 21st century.

Out of the ISTE standards for educators, the one standard that is most meaningful to me is being a leader. It is so important to be able to guide and empower students to develop them into the best life-long learners. The one standard that seems outside my current skill set is being an analyst. Analyzing data is not one of my strong suits, but I hope this class will help me with that so when I become a teacher I can use data to help lead my instruction and support my student's educational goals.

I personally do believe in the label "digital native" for today's youth. To be digitally native, it means that one grew up using technology so in a sense using technology comes easy to them because they are so used it. In the classroom I notice a difference between myself, a digital native, and the teachers, digital immigrants. In my high school every classroom was equipped with a SmartBoard. There would be times where the teachers would struggle to power it on or get it so they could use the special pen to write on it. They would ask for a student's help in my class and my peers could do it instantaneously. This just took time away from our lesson, so we had less time to learn the material that class period because my teachers would struggle with the technology. In the future I honestly do not anticipate much of a difference between me and my students and how we use technology. I grew up a digital native and so are they, so we should be pretty close in skill.