Journal 4

Even though I haven't been active on the educational twitter for long, I'm already seeing how this can be beneficial for educators. Personally, I have been interacting with a lot of my peers in the class. I also follow random education twitters who I favorite and retweet their tweets. I can see twitter being really helpful in my future career because of how connected it makes you. Being able to follow your personal school district and also fellow teachers of the same grade/subject as you keeps you in the know. Interacting with your peers is a perfect way to make sure you know the best way to teach ideas to your students and make sure you're on the same page as other teachers teaching the same things as you.

The digital divide has the potential to really affect student success in schools because not being able to use technology as well because you don't have access to it can make if very difficult for some students. For example, if a student from an area with little access to technology transfers to an area with a lot of technology, it would be very hard for them. They probably wouldn't be able to use the different necessary technologies. Its also easier for students with access to the internet to pretty much do everything they might have to do. Lack of money in certain school systems and districts are a big cause of the digital divide. A school that can afford to give every student a netbook versus a school that only has a few old computers in the library can make the digital divide a lot more prevalent. As a teacher, you have to be very aware of the divide to make sure every student has equal opportunities to  get work completed. You also have to make sure every student knows how to use all the required online websites and services.

I think, as a future educator, there are certainly specific educational softwares that I think I will use more than others. I think Microsoft Word seems so helpful in being able to create and share tests, documents, and ideas to students! Also, its helpful for students to be able to send and create documents to turn in and assess their knowledge. In like 5th grade, I can see this being so helpful. In that same grade, there are other softwares and services out for me to use that I do not think would be as helpful. I think that like big online informational databases might not be as useful. Fifth graders wouldn't know how to use them nor would they find information useful to them that they would even be able to understand! As an educator of 5th grade, I don't think databases would be as helpful either since the ideas you are going to need to be teaching are more simple and wouldn't need intensive research for a teacher to be able to understand and teach.