Post #4 Twitter, Digital Divide, Programs & E-Course

Twitter has been a fun and intriguing way of communicating with my classmates and interacting with my peers. I read my classmates tweets every weeks and am able to see everything that they re-tweet as well. This has been beneficial because I am able to interact with others in my class and see how they are doing in this class and what they have to say. Also, being able to read the articles that some of my classmates are re-tweeting gives me the opportunity to learn and be engaged within the education world and to be updated with current news. It is also beneficial to participate discussions through Twitter and communicate that way.

Twitter could be helpful in my career for a number of ways, one including growth of my company through social media and marketing. Another could be interacting with my co-workers on this platform and reading articles that they share as well.

The digital divide is the gap between people who do and do not have access to technology because even in today's world, some still don't a computer or internet access. This divide can sometimes effect a student's advantage at educational success when they do not have access to internet. For example, if a student lives in rural area and does not have internet access at home opposed to someone who may be surrounded by technology at home; these two will differ greatly.

As a teacher, I have to be sensitive to the issues of the digital divide and notice whether my students have tech access at home. I also should strive to facilitate tech. based learning experiences during school hours to help grow my students confidence for technology, as the podcast said.

The types of student software that I expect to use the most would be word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software and desktop publishing software. These are a few software programs that I am already familiar with and will incorporate these into my teaching as a tool.

Some programs that I am less likely to use would be graphic software, illustration and drawing programs, animation and 3D programs because I am not yet familiar with these programs. But after learning a little bit about them from reading this chapter they seem to be great tools that could help students learn in a creative way For example, I could see how when teaching a middle school science class how 3D software would be incredibly beneficial for the students to see. A software like Draw Plus, could create three dimensional images, like the Earth, and show the students the different layers that are inside of the Earth.

After finishing the e-Course, I feel that I have learned a great amount in such a short time period. A lot of the material was new to me but some I had a little bit of experience with already. I found this e-Course incredibly beneficial and I think the knowledge that I learned will greatly benefit me in a work place setting as I transition from college to career. I learned about a number of new programs and software's that I did not know were available to me and how they could help me succeed.