Blog 5

 My early twitter experience goes back to eight grade. I remember making a twitter account and just using it to follow my favorite celebrities, funny accounts and friends. When I first started using Twitter, I did not use it for any educational reason, but simply for fun. I mainly interacted with friends and random accounts that I found funny, relatable or popular. I have strayed away from Twitter recently as a social media platform, but still occasionally check it. I have sometimes used Twitter and found it beneficial, if I needed to know something celebrity related or news related, but nothing major. In my future career, I think Twitter will be beneficial. If I end up teaching an older class, I would want to use Twitter and have them use their accounts to find useful information about whatever we happen to be learning and to interact with each other. If I have a younger class, I would use Twitter personally to find resources and aids to help me.

The digital divide is the gap between those who have access to technology and Wifi and those who do not. The digital divide affects student success because those who have access to technology and Wifi will be better prepared and have more resources and access to help. For example, if two students are struggling in math, and one has access to technology and Wifi, that one student can watch Youtube videos or look up resources to get help and better understand the topic. While the other student who does not have access to technology and or Wifi, is at a disadvantage, because they can not look this up and or get the extra help. Some causes of this digital divide are income and schools. Better schools have more access and resources to nicer technology, better books, and can help students more. For example, the private school in my district at home, all the students have Ipads, that the school gave them to do school work. While my school couldn't afford the newest additions of text books for our class. As a future educator, I will most definitely experience this in some way. This can affect my teaching strategies if I use more online resources and assign online homework or readings online. I believe to avoid this, I can just use more text (hard copy) homework and assignments. 

Two academic software programs I would want to implement would be Khan Academy and Google Scholar. I like Khan Academy because it gives you a range of grades, skills and resources. I used Khan Academy when studying for my SAT and found it extremely beneficial. I still use it to this day when I need extra help in math or whatever the subject may be. I used to have Khan Academy homework when I was in grade school. My math teacher would assign us a set to do for practice and we would have to do it. Depending on the grade I teach and how well they are with technology and their access to it, I would probably do the same. I would also let it be extra credit if they did an extra assignment. I would also implement the use of Google Scholar. I use this frequently in my own studies here at FSU, because I like how the articles I search are good, valuable articles that I can use. Again depending on the grade I teach, I would ask my students to use Google Scholar to find two references for a paper they were using or even for a current event. 

I like the use of badges in classrooms. If I were to implement badges in my classroom, I would similarly use it to how we use it here, after a certain number of badges, you can use it to re-submit something or for late work. I would also implement them as extra credit for a quiz and or test. I don't believe I have ever earned a badge, and I don't think I would share it, I would probably just keep it and be proud of it myself.