Blog Journal #7

     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 course the National Association of Gifted Education.

  https://sites.google.com/gm.sbac.edu/schimeltl/home

    Before this class, I never really gave much thought to the use of "productivity tools". However, when I learned about Trello, it seemed like something that I could actually use, that is not too involved or intrusive as some of the other tools I looked up online seemed. I am always writing to-do lists, but from an organizational standpoint, there's only so much that I can do. I really liked its feature of setting due dates for tasks, and the automatic function of moving fulfilled tasks to a completed section. Moreover, it gives me the ability to plan ahead, without using a calendar function. Personally, when I see all of the events and things to do laid out across a month, it becomes overwhelming for me very quickly. Contrastingly, looking at the layout and functioning of Trello felt engaging, organized, and not overwhelming at all. For an online software it seemed the most like my current paper and pen to-do lists, while providing benefits and options that are only available when using a digital tool.

    I noticed the challenge on our class Canvas page, but I did not participate in the challenge. Honestly, I am still not very comfortable navigating Twitter, having never used it before this class. In general, I am not the most savvy individual when it comes to social media, and that combined with forgetfulness, I simply did not end up doing the challenge. Overall, I feel that the challenge was a neat idea to get people involved more on Twitter and specifically within the EME2040 Twitter community.