Blog Post #5

 My first experience using Twitter was when I was a freshman in high school. I remember downloading the app and using it mainly to communicate with friends from school. Specifically, the two girls I sat with on the bus and I would come up with funny tweets on the way home and upload photos of each when we would fall asleep on the way to school with funny captions or drawings on our faces. Now as a senior in college, Twitter has evolved and so have I, so my experience using it is very different. Now, I mainly use it to follow different groups on campus and to retweet and favorite other peoples' posts. I do not use Twitter a lot anymore, but I do interact with people there on occasion and it could be beneficial for my future career if I were to become a school counselor. It could be really fun to have a Twitter account that my students could follow so they could interact with me and get to know me better. Also, I could post mental health tips, important deadlines/reminders, and be a positive mentor and presence online. 

The digital divide is the reality of students having access to different levels of technology both in the classroom and at home. Some students may have access to smartphones and computers in order to assist them in doing homework while others may not even have access to a computer at home. This can heavily affect school performance. A child who does not have a computer is at a disadvantage when it comes to completing assignments with ease, understanding basic tech fundamentals, and cannot easily look up homework help like other students would be able to. The digital divide can occur due to family economic status as well as locational factors. As a teacher, the digital divide would greatly affect my teaching strategies. It is important to remain aware of what students have technology versus those who don't have technology at home. It would not be fair to assign videos to watch at home or essays that need to be submitted through any kind of online platform with students who can't access those resources.

Academic software is so good for students. Two things I would implement and encourage my students to use in the classroom would be Kahoot and Quizlet. Kahoot is so fun to play in the classroom and actually helps students to master concepts. In high school, we did Kahoot games all the time in science and whoever came in the top three got bonus points on the test. The Kahoots got so competitive, and it encouraged students to not wait until the night before to study for the exam because people would want to study before we played the Kahoot game a couple of days prior to the test. I would also encourage students to use Quizlet in order to study. Quizlet is more beneficial than flashcards because they can be accessed anywhere, and there are also interactive quiz games you can play with yourself in order to fully master the content. Both of these programs are free to use.