A Discussion on Twitter, the Digital Divide, and Academic Software

My early experiences with using Twitter in relation to this class has been few and far between. I always forget to login into my Twitter and go through my feed twice a week. I have interacted with other students in my EME 2040 class as well as the official EME 2040 account. I also follow various account related to teaching and education such as Teacher2Teacher, MindShift, and WeAreTeachers, to name a few. These accounts help bring in related information and topics to my major of interest. It allows me to see the current problems, innovations, and growths in the education world. In my future career, this could help me participate in online twitter chats about conference that I might not be able to attend.

Personally, I think that the digital divide definitely affects student success in schools. A digital divide is created when students do not have the same access to technology at school and at home. It can also come from having technology, but not having a good understanding of how to use the technology. As a classroom teacher, I might experience some aspects of the digital divide depending on a number of different factors. The school that I am teaching in might not have the funds to buy updated technology or any technology in the first place. There could also not be enough computers or tablets for all the students to complete a task simultaneously. My students could also not have access to a computer or internet in their homes. They may have to go to the public library to use a computer or they may have to completer all of their online work when at school. As a teacher, it affects what my lesson plans will include and how much technology I can implement into my classroom.

Academic software for students are computer programs and websites that facilitate student learning and educational growth. In my future classroom, I would like to implement some authoring system that allows my students to create their own study sets or practice quizzes for their classmates. I would also implement educational games so that my students can have fun while also learning and review current materials. An example of an authoring software is the online website Quizlet, which allows users to create sets of flashcards and quizzes to review for tests and quizzes. I would like my student to use Quizlet because it allows them to study in their own way and write the information in a language that they can understand. For educational games, I would use the website Lexia Reading Core 5, which has a ton of different reaching exercises and games that my students can work their way through. I would use Lexia because it allows for the student sown exploration and allows me as a teacher to get other things completed while they practice on their own.