Blog #5

 I got Instagram when I was in elementary school, when my friend introduced it to me. We were at Dicks Wings for dinner with our parents and other family friends, when my friend showed me this social media app she got. I thought it was so cool, I downloaded it my iPad. Right when I got it, I followed my friend, as well as other people I knew. I made my first post. It of course, was nothing extravagant, it was just a selfie of my friend and I sitting at our table. The longer I've had it, the better I got at posting. Instead of posting a casual selfie frequently, I started posting photos of my friends and I that other people took, and these would only be on special occasions like birthdays, events, or holidays. Instagram gave me the opportunity to show people I know what I've been up to, see what others are doing, and make new friends with mutuals or my friends' friends. Twitter, on the other hand, I got when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, So I haven't been using it as much. I mainly use twitter to keep up with the K-pop community drama and check out what my favorite artists have been posting. I can see it being useful in a career sense, because it's a great way to see what everyone is interested in. As someone who wants to be a school psychologist, this would help me understand the students in school a little better and help me help them.

The digital divide refers to the unequal access and usage of technology, particularly with people who don't have access to a smartphone, tablet or computer. Since school has been using more online platforms recently, this might be a severe disadvantage to students affected by this. It's become the standard that students have an electronic device (like a computer) to complete work on, and if they don't, they would not be able to do well in their courses. Some causes of the digital divide include low literacy and income levels, geographical restrictions, lack of motivation to use technology, lack of physical access to technology. If I were the teacher, considering that this problem may arise in my classroom, I'll try to minimize it by having the majority of the homework and classwork be done in a physical workbook, just like how it was done traditionally. Another way I could do this is get a bunch of laptops the students could use in class and set aside time specifically for homework.

"A Pair of Students Looking at a Man i Front Using a Laptop" by Mikhail Nilov is licensed under CC BY

In my future classroom, I would like to implement Canvas and ClassDojo. For Canvas, I would like to use this because according to Research.com, it is the number one academic software platform. Additionally, since I'm very familiar with it, I can show my students how to use this without learning about an entirely different platform. As for ClassDojo, I've seen some of the teachers in my field experience use this application for their students and it's a great way to keep a point system going. For example, whenever a student went above and beyond, they would receive "dojo points", and if they do something bad or get in trouble, they will lose points. It also has some of the same features Canvas does.