EME2040 Blog Post #5

    My early experiences using twitter as a tool in my Personal Learning Network have been beneficial. It is super helpful because educators of all different experiences and ages. It is a little hard because most of that content is not moderated so it may be difficult to weed out what is fake news and what isn't. I do feel it will be helpful in my future career because I can get specific advice from other people in the same field and who may have had the same issues as me. Sometimes it can be hard to get help from people close to you, like people inside your school, so using a platform like Twitter could be a good way to get help if you don't feel comfortable going to someone you already know. 

    The digital divide affects student success in schools because a lot of standards students have to meet are dependent on technology and they may not have a socioeconomic background that supports their use for technology. Some causes of the digital divide are income inequality, location, and more. I think it would be really difficult in future classrooms to manage a classroom full of students that are not fairly paired up with their technology backgrounds. For example having some students who may not even know what a phone or computer is and having others that use technology everyday. This seems harder to manage rather than having a class that's all evenly matched up in their technology knowledge, whether they know a lot or a little.

    Academic software for students are any online tools or resources that could be used in an educational setting. In the future I am planning on teaching elementary schoolers and one piece of academic software I've seen a lot in the elementary setting is ClassDojo. This is a resource that allows teachers to communicate with students and parents and has a reward system. This is definitely one piece of academic software I plan on implanting in my classroom. Another piece of academic software I plan on using is Google Classroom or Canvas, depending on the school. This is a good tool for classroom management and keeping all online assignments in one spot.