Life in Color {Spring23-EME2040}

     This class has been a really fun and beneficial experience for me. This course provided me with the ability to grow in my technology skills, and critically think about how I could apply those to an educational setting. I think the hardest thing in this class has been the blogs, surprisingly. While they are not objectively difficult, per se, attempting to formulate my personal thoughts about what I have been learning into a public medium, has been a growing process. I loved how we were able to get creative with assignments and try a lot of different websites, apps, and softwares. One thing that I would want to improve on or modify in the future as a teacher would be to include more group work for in-class discussions and activities. I would also not have group assignments or projects either. Personally, I feel that group projects or assignments can be more tedious than beneficial because it requires coordinating schedules and figuring out how to collaborate fairly and effectively.

      I really enjoyed getting to work on this website design assignment for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it gave me a chance to be creative, envisioning myself as a teacher preparing a website for her class. Secondly, I gained experience working with Weebly, an entirely new platform for me to use. I also got the chance to practice applying the CRAP principles as I designed my class website. In particular I really spent time ensuring that I had repetition of colors and fonts throughout. I really used a light, almost sea-foam blue, light green, and darker greens and blues in the pictures that I included of places around the world in nature. And I made sure that all of the title and body fonts were consistent on each page. I can use this as a future teacher to create a bridge between my students' parents or guardians and myself. It will allow me to share important information, announcements, and links to other resources more easily and on a 24/7 available basis. Here is my website

      For this first prompt, I went back and looked at some websites of the teachers from my old middle school. I found some similarities across the group of theme: links to a syllabus, the online textbook portal, some information about the course, and a separate page with external links. This middle school uses Google Classroom as their primary classroom software, and so many of the websites directed parents and students to check that first, if they had any questions about assignments, announcements, or projects and tests. One thing that I did like about using a website is the ability to tailor it to your specific course, or other school roles and responsibilities. For example, a Civics teacher who happens to be the soccer coach for the school, included a page for information about the soccer team as well. Additionally, being a gifted teacher, she created a distinct page for providing links to articles and other sites about giftedness and education, parenting a gifted student, and of

     Before this class, I had never heard of or used Diigo for research. Gale does have a similar platform, where you can annotate, download, and highlight sources, so I can see how Diigo would be equally useful.  Personally, the format is easy enough to navigate. In particular, I liked the ability to see a recently visited webpage on your Diigo page with the extension. Overall it seems intuitive enough and the fact that it is free is a huge plus if I were to have future students use this in my classroom.     I would use Evernote as my Web 2.0 resource. It allows you to create forms and handouts and allows you to share them digitally with parents and students. Additionally, it also has the ability to sync notes amongst multiple electronic devices. It features an in-app camera and has a "learner profile" function, making it possible to put down notes personalized to each student, evaluations, and recommendations pertaining to the student. It is a tool specifically for teachers

      The digital divide is a considerably involved issue that deeply affects our education system and the opportunity and success of students across the United States.   Technology has permeated our daily lives, such that its presence is hardly avoidable. In turn, the use of personal devices, computers, and laptops have become integrated into lesson plans, group assignments, homework. Even under ordinary circumstances, children without access to a computer or internet at home find themselves at more of a disadvantage than their peers. Particularly during a time like COVID, when schools were put online almost entirely, a child's access to technology, or lack thereof greatly impacted their ability to keep up their personal academic progress and stay on par with peers. Furthermore, depending on how well funded a school district is, students who may be looking to their school to help provide them with the electronic devices they need to complete their work, actually find themselves en

      After looking at the ELA Technology Standards for grades K-2, I chose to focus in on Benchmark SC.K2.CS-CP.3.1 To describe it in my own words, it means showing that you, meaning the student, is capable of making digital visuals, presentations, etc. alongside help from those in the classroom and at home, whether teachers, parents an guardians, or peers. I feel that I will be able to teach and uphold this standard in my classroom as a teacher for a couple of reasons. Firstly, as the benchmark outlines, students are expected to create things that are "developmentally appropriate", meaning that they are only expected to create something that is on par with their grade level. Thus, if working with a class of first graders, I do not need to need to be able to get them to understand how to make, say an iMovie, on their own. Rather, they may only need to know how to type information that they learned from their research in a few slides and add in a few pictures, and chose a fon