Blog #4

 
Twitter is a social media outlet that I use everyday and I find that the educational resources that you can follow and retweet on twitter provide valuable information about our education system today that I was unaware of. With this, I hope that I can become more active on twitter and provide more of my thoughts on the education field and also learn more information from others in the class as well as those that I follow relating to technology in the classroom and education in general. I feel as though this assignment is useful in that we can communicate with others on a technology outlet which can show how fast valuable information can spread between individuals.
   The digital divide defiantly affects students in the classroom in multiple ways. This divide can ultimately hinder a students learning and their future in their life. There are multiple ways that we can help this divide to not hinder students as much, but there will still be an affect because of the digital divide. Normally if the access to technology is low, students are not expected to use the technology which causes there to be less technological literacy compared to those areas who stress using technology within their classrooms. Technology is becoming a determining factor of the success rate of our students and while I agree with our advancing society that we need to use technology in classrooms, I feel as though we shouldn't stress it as much as we do and possibly try and introduce a different way to include technology within the classrooms so that those schools and areas that don't have as much access to technology as they would like don't fall as far behind which in turn will allow there to be more success later in their lives. As a teacher, I hope that I am able to facilitate the learning of my students with the use of technology but that is not something that I want my entire classroom to focus on. I would rather prepare my students for the outside world without using technology rather than focusing solely on the use of technology in my classroom. I feel as though looking into real life situations is more beneficial that just worrying about technological literacy so that my students will be able to adapt to our ever changing society and be successful later on in their lives. With this, I know other teachers they may have down the line will use a technology more within their classrooms which will allow my past students to be successful using technology even if I don't necessarily focus my entire class on the use of technology.
   I expect to use software for spelling words like spelling city, some websites that work on basic math skills, and maybe Microsoft word and powerpoint. I would like to teach in the younger elementary grade levels which may limit the amount of technology that I can use just because everything will be so new to these students so I will have to teach alot about how to use the computer which could take away from actual instructional time which is not a great idea. With this though I hope that I am able to incorporate some technology so that my students are able to keep up with our ever changing society and not fall into the digital divide.