blog journal 4

•  A paragraph about your early experiences using Twitter. With whom have you been interacting and how have you found it beneficial?  How might Twitter be helpful in your future career?
• At first, Twitter seemed boring and a bit confusing. After a while on Twitter, I have learned a lot of different things about education and heard what other people have to say. I have been interacting with a few different educational resources and elementary school-related accounts. These accounts post interesting information about updates in school and cool technology that is being implemented in classrooms. One that really stood out was a post about Virtual Reality used in classrooms. 
• A paragraph about the digital divide.  How does the digital divide affect student success in schools? What are some causes of the digital divide?  Reflect on what you may experience as a classroom teacher and how this will affect your teaching strategies.
• The digital divide is the gap between the people who can access and have the ability to use resources and technology and those who do not have that option. This can cause a lot of problems, especially in a classroom. All students need to have the same access to online resources and different materials in order to learn at the same pace and keep up. However, for many reasons like poverty and lack of trained teachers and different academic resources or administration, it is possible for a digital divide to cause issues in the classroom. If I were a teacher someday and there was a digital divide in my classroom it would be quite difficult to keep every student on the same level and give them resources they may need to succeed. It would be a lot more work to help every individual student succeed despite the resources available. 
• A paragraph about academic software for students.  Identify two software tools you would like to implement in your future classroom.  Describe the software tools and why you would like to use them with your future students. 
• Two of my favorite software tools that I would like to implement in my future classroom are coolmath.com and quizlet.com. Both of these academic software programs are used to help students learn while having fun. Coolmath has a lot of games that involve applying the student's math skills in order to do well or win the games. Quizlet is used to help students study. It has different tools like flashcards, practice quizzes, games, and much more. In order for students to do well, they have to be engaged in what they are learning and one way to do so is to provide fun interactive activities pertaining to the lessons and these two academic software tools do just that.