Blog Journal 4

Blog Journal 4
By: Jamie Rudden

I first started using Twitter in High School as a means of sharing interesting posts and photos between friends. I would mostly use my account to tweet happy birthday posts, or to recap memories after a big school event such as Homecoming. I would also use Twitter as a way to learn about current events happening around the world and in my town. I've found Twitter to be very beneficial in helping me stay informed about whats going on in the world around me. As a future teacher, I believe Twitter could be a very useful tool in many ways. I think I could utilize it as a way to communicate between faculty and parents, as well as to gain information from other teachers in the community. 

The Digital Divide is a term used to describe the gap between people who have access to technology, and those who don't. Technology is a huge part of the modern world, so those students who grow up without easy access and experience with it, may have a disadvantage to other more experienced users. I believe the Digital Divide is the result of the imbalance of school resources across the United States. Students in poorer neighborhoods usually attend lower rated schools that may not have the resources to provide their students with an adequate technology education. As a future educator, I must be acutely aware of the digital divide in the classroom, so that I can implore different strategies to rectify it. One such strategy would be to incorporate as much technology based learning as I can in the classroom, so that those students who don't have access at home can still learn important skills. 

Incorporating technology in the classroom is a very useful strategy to communicate, organize, and share information. As a future teacher, two software tools I would like to implement in my classroom would be Edmodo and ClassDojo. Both softwares allow easy means of communication between students, teachers, and parents. I would use Edmodo as a way to upload homework assignments, study tools, and other informational links to provide to my students. I would utilize the ClassDojo software as a way to organize and maintain a structured classroom. The ClassDojo software assigns a character for each student, and they can receive and lose points for positive and negative behavior. I think that tracking student behavior is a good way to motivate the students to behave, as well as keep the parents informed of what gets on in the classroom.