Blog 4- Twitter and the Digital Divide

Besides for the purposes of this class, I have not really ever used Twitter. I have a personal account but I only used it to follow FSU related groups and events. As far as this class goes, I think I could be a bit more engaged in what is available to me on Twitter. Personally I think it is hard to find people and tags to interact with that would be useful to me because I don't know what to search or how to find them. I want there to be like suggested things to follow. One thing I have liked though is that I have a friend in the online version of this class, so I have been able to see her tweets and compare what her class is doing to what we are. I suppose that Twitter could be helpful to my future career if I can find the right resources on it. I am a big instagram user and I have found a lot of useful education related accounts. A unique aspect of Twitter is that it seems to be more collaborative/interactive though, so that could be very useful in learning from my fellow educators.

The digital divide is a very real problem, especially in lower-income areas. This is referring to when not everyone has the same access to technology. This can affect students because if they are given assignments that require using technology outside of the classroom, not everyone may be able to have access to what they need for the assignment. Although technology access is becoming increasingly more common, as an educator, especially depending on where I am teaching, I may still encounter students that can't access the things they need. In order to address this, if we are doing assignments that require technology, if possible I would try to find time during the school day for all of the students to use technology. 

I'm a little unsure as to what qualifies as academic software for students. When I think of software I think of super advanced programs that not the average person uses. Assuming that this qualifies, I would use Class Dojo as a way to keep track of behaviors and things in the classroom. I would also be really big on using educational games, which is a form of academic software according to my quick google search. I intend on teaching at the elementary level so academic games are an excellent way to keep your students engaged and learning at the same time. My goal as a teacher is to always stay up to date with ways to teach my students and I expect that to involve many kinds of academic software as technology advances.