Twitter has fought its way through the social media gauntlet and made its name as a social media powerhouse alongside Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. This being said, it has become one of the main sources of information for the average modern-day individual. I, personally, don't use Twitter as much as my peers. In high school I used Twitter pretty consistently for about a year or two once I attended a national convention for TV students. This convention had so many opportunities to connect and so many fun interactive accounts on Twitter and I kind of had to get more involved. After that convention, I also became a Senior News Director for our daily broadcast and at the time we hadn't really had any segments that involved social media, which was one of the components that was looked for in shows for competitions. So, I ended up coming up with a weekly social media segment to keep up with what students wanted to see on the show. Since then, I haven't used Twitter until this class. Now, I interact with my classmates, old teachers, and have been exploring more accounts to follow that can help me build my learning network on Twitter.
The Digital Divide. A topic that students, like me, who were privileged enough to be born into a generally well-off family who chose to live in areas zoned for highly ranked schools, doesn't think about very often. I was born during the time between the Millenial and Gen Z generations. I grew up in a gray area of transition. I still very much remember the clear sheets teachers would put on the under-lit projectors and write on with whiteboard markers. I also very much remember when cellphones became more accessible and convenient for the general public. I got my first phone in 5th grade. That was quite late compared to the other kids in my area. I also had a limit of 30 text messages per month, which made things quite frustrating while trying to make plans with my friends who had unlimited texting. While frustrating, I still eventually caught up in high school and got a smartphone. I also shared a laptop and home computer with my siblings until we moved. I had to beg my dad for my own laptop. He couldn't understand why I needed it, but once he understood that I needed to be able to type papers, do research, and do online homework, he went out and bought me one. A privilege many cannot afford. The digital divide is very much caused by our economic statuses and the cost of this technology. As technology advances, computers and the internet become more efficient. The cost of making these things begins to go down as more people figure out better ways to build these things. The divide is slowly disappearing, but it will be forever prominent as long as our human reliance on economic competition remains. As we advance as a society, there are more things to learn, which means we need to speed up this learning process in schools and keep our students up-to-date with new technology so that they are familiar with the tech and can utilize those skills in college and in the working world. When writing the biggest research paper of my Junior year of high school, we were required to have a certain amount of online resources, the paper had to be typed, and we had to submit the assignment online to Turnitin. With the resources I had at home, I would've been perfectly capable of writing the paper at home, however, our English teachers understood there was a digital divide, so, they had us all go to the media center once a week throughout the time we were working on the paper. For entire class periods, we were able to take advantage of the computers and resources our school had. The students that didn't have access to these resources would be able to get their paper done with the rest of the class and no one was singled out for not having the resources at their own disposal. Students were also able to collaborate and help one another at this time, proofreading each other's papers, helping with formatting, it was a whole period of genuine collaboration and learning that we didn't really realize was happening. I hope that one day technology will be accessible to everyone, no matter the socioeconomic status, but until then, I feel that this is one of the best ways to mend the divide while also teaching students to critically evaluate one another's work and provide constructive feedback.
Two software tools I would hope to utilize in my future classroom, if I were to teach an upper-level English class, would be Google Drive or OneDrive and Google docs. Google Drive and OneDrive are clouds for anyone to upload files to that they can access from any computer or even smartphone. The reason I would want to encourage my students to use this software is because technology is unpredictable. You never know when you are going to forget your laptop or forget to save the files to a thumb drive. You also never know if your computer might not be compatible with the printers you have access to. Drives give students the ability to access their files from a friend's computer if something isn't quite working with theirs. Life is not always forgiving and it's important to give students a way to have a backup plan and to teach them to always have a backup plan. I think Google Docs is an important tool to use for English classes, specifically, because it enables collaboration. The most important thing I have learned since officially changing to a Creative Writing major is that writing requires collaboration. My favorite thing about the English department is the fact that they all collaborate to make each other the best writers they can be. They critically analyze and check one another to help each other improve the skills they already have which is essential for growth.
The Digital Divide. A topic that students, like me, who were privileged enough to be born into a generally well-off family who chose to live in areas zoned for highly ranked schools, doesn't think about very often. I was born during the time between the Millenial and Gen Z generations. I grew up in a gray area of transition. I still very much remember the clear sheets teachers would put on the under-lit projectors and write on with whiteboard markers. I also very much remember when cellphones became more accessible and convenient for the general public. I got my first phone in 5th grade. That was quite late compared to the other kids in my area. I also had a limit of 30 text messages per month, which made things quite frustrating while trying to make plans with my friends who had unlimited texting. While frustrating, I still eventually caught up in high school and got a smartphone. I also shared a laptop and home computer with my siblings until we moved. I had to beg my dad for my own laptop. He couldn't understand why I needed it, but once he understood that I needed to be able to type papers, do research, and do online homework, he went out and bought me one. A privilege many cannot afford. The digital divide is very much caused by our economic statuses and the cost of this technology. As technology advances, computers and the internet become more efficient. The cost of making these things begins to go down as more people figure out better ways to build these things. The divide is slowly disappearing, but it will be forever prominent as long as our human reliance on economic competition remains. As we advance as a society, there are more things to learn, which means we need to speed up this learning process in schools and keep our students up-to-date with new technology so that they are familiar with the tech and can utilize those skills in college and in the working world. When writing the biggest research paper of my Junior year of high school, we were required to have a certain amount of online resources, the paper had to be typed, and we had to submit the assignment online to Turnitin. With the resources I had at home, I would've been perfectly capable of writing the paper at home, however, our English teachers understood there was a digital divide, so, they had us all go to the media center once a week throughout the time we were working on the paper. For entire class periods, we were able to take advantage of the computers and resources our school had. The students that didn't have access to these resources would be able to get their paper done with the rest of the class and no one was singled out for not having the resources at their own disposal. Students were also able to collaborate and help one another at this time, proofreading each other's papers, helping with formatting, it was a whole period of genuine collaboration and learning that we didn't really realize was happening. I hope that one day technology will be accessible to everyone, no matter the socioeconomic status, but until then, I feel that this is one of the best ways to mend the divide while also teaching students to critically evaluate one another's work and provide constructive feedback.
Two software tools I would hope to utilize in my future classroom, if I were to teach an upper-level English class, would be Google Drive or OneDrive and Google docs. Google Drive and OneDrive are clouds for anyone to upload files to that they can access from any computer or even smartphone. The reason I would want to encourage my students to use this software is because technology is unpredictable. You never know when you are going to forget your laptop or forget to save the files to a thumb drive. You also never know if your computer might not be compatible with the printers you have access to. Drives give students the ability to access their files from a friend's computer if something isn't quite working with theirs. Life is not always forgiving and it's important to give students a way to have a backup plan and to teach them to always have a backup plan. I think Google Docs is an important tool to use for English classes, specifically, because it enables collaboration. The most important thing I have learned since officially changing to a Creative Writing major is that writing requires collaboration. My favorite thing about the English department is the fact that they all collaborate to make each other the best writers they can be. They critically analyze and check one another to help each other improve the skills they already have which is essential for growth.
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