My Blog

 The latter half of my junior year and the entirety of my senior year of high school were spent in lock down. I enjoyed that I had the luxury of staying at home whilst also doing school work, since I wasn't a fan of getting up at 7:30 A.M. and taking the bus to school. However, I disliked the varied responses teachers had to the lock down. Some teachers acted like there was no lock down, causing most of the class to fall behind, while other teachers didn't move ahead at all. If I become a teacher, I'd be sure to COVID proof my lessons so that the transition between in person to online would be (hopefully) seamless. OER, simply put, are accessible resources that anybody can use within the classroom. The OER article I found talked about Climate Optimism and a fully remodeled Climate Project. The article opens with discussing how many young adults and adolescents feel that they are helpless in changing the world around them. It then leads to talk about how having optimism coul...

 1. A lot of the experience I gained from this assignment is with handling wix.com, rather than the application of CRAP principles. That's not to say I didn't use CRAP principles: I used contrast to allow my words to be apparent on the page, and alignment to make sure any figures were aligned. I imagine some good Wix website creators make their site look good, but I've found that I really don't like how it works. Overall, I'd say that I'll keep CRAP principles in mind if I ever have to make a personal website for myself, but I won't be using Wix the next time I do so. https://thejar168.wixsite.com/my-site-2 2. AI is a part of everyday life at this point, but I won't say that I go out of my way to use AI tools such as ChatGPT. I believe that using those tools produces an equivalent, if not worse, outcome that a human currently can (ex. a human asks ChatGPT to make a code for a project. It produces what looks to be  a working code, but has so many bugs tha...

 I had a hard time finding a teacher page for any local schools. I was able to find staff directories, listing the e-mails that teachers/faculty provide for outreach, but nothing beyond that. Some websites I looked at had announcements praising teachers for being awarded teacher of the year, but that was as much information as I could find without a log-in or guided navigation through the website. Overall, I found nothing about class pages during my search. I haven't viewed technology as part of my development as a professional, as I mostly focus on how I can efficiently a lot of my time to do the work I have. Although it isn't a teacher-specific development tool, I could see myself utilizing Google Calendar to begin planning and dispersing my workload across the week. I've found myself procrastinating a lot of the work I do, and I realize that not addressing this problem may culminate in there simply being too much work for me to do at one time, so using a calendar resourc...

 1. I don't think that Twitter will be very helpful in my future career. Although I had not interacted much on Twitter before this class, it has helped me find access to other teachers on the website. However, I keep in mind that it can be hard to trust what people say/advocate for on these websites, as the internet provides anonymity that makes it hard to track credibility. With that in mind, I intend to avoid using Twitter in my future teaching career. 2. The digital divide determines how connected some of the students are, with those who are unable to enter the digital world being left out in the divide. This prevents all students from being able to interact with one another on the same level, leaving certain students left out of groups that discuss coursework. Because these students are unable to interact with their peers about homework, they are often left to their own means when outside of school. This leads to these students having worse grades as a result. With this in mind...

1. I will be looking at grade 12, and benchmark  SC.K2.CS-CP.2.4 . This benchmark askes teachers to make a simple program using code in Computer Science and Programming, and I can confidently say that I am not prepared to teach this course. Most of the education courses I've attended so far discuss the ethics and practices of teaching, not so much the material of the courses I'd be teaching. Although I do not know if computer science courses for primary school are offered, I imagine they may be few and far between. 2. I took a look and the Genes and Health toolkit for this. I believe that this toolkit, as well as the others, provide a good base line for lessons on the subject matter that they discuss. Additionally, the Genes and Health toolkit also provides some practice students could possibly use to test their knowledge of the material. However, I couldn't seem to find a section discussing the benchmark I found on creating a simple program using computer science. 3. Being...

I believe that schools should be exempt from certain copyright laws. Although I understand why this isn't the case (faculty or students stealing and using software/other materials outside of the classroom), I still believe that it would make educators' lives much easier by allowing them to be exempt from these laws. As a teacher though, I'd try to find ways to provide my own instructional materials to my students. I believe that doing so could make the material more accessible/applicable to the students than the copyrighted materials could.  I'd confront the issue of student privacy by using software/websites that allow students to provide answers anonymously while I still know who gave the answer. Additionally, whenever these activities are happening, I'd place folders in between students to make sure privacy is ensured. If students wish, they can take down their folders if they wish to share their answers with their peers. Students should be enabled to have privac...

 A lot of my colleagues prefer Microsoft Word over Google Docs, but I must say that I prefer Docs to Word. Word is indisputably better than Google Docs in terms of features, but I feel that the amount of time I've spent using Docs simply makes it more comfortable for me to use. I've only used docs to write out papers, and so I never found the need to use Word's list of functions. I would say that I'd have to be forced to use Word in order not to use Docs, a big factor for this being the different ways that the programs download projects. For Docs, I press download and it's done. For Word, I have to Save As, designate a file, perhaps create a folder, etc. etc.. Although it's nice to have that specificity, I enjoy the simplicity of simply downloading my doc and using it as I wish. On paper, I think the ISTE and ISTE standards are great. They promote good standards and practices for teachers, and would seem to promote a good learning environment. However, I believe...