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Hello parents and welcome to my final blog of the school year! It is sad to think that this is the last one for you parents to read but I can't believe that we made it through the school year. It has been a pleasure to have all your students this year and I truly cannot wait to see what each of them do in the future. I am so excited to share this article with you because I really think it helps parents understand technology in the classroom. This article is called "Digital Citizenship in the Curriculum" by Daniel G. Krutka and Jeffrey P. Carpenter. One of the biggest points that is made during this article is students need to be taught with and about social media, they should not be blocked from it because then they cannot fully learn and understand what is needed and using technology may also be able to help them grow as people. If we teach with and through technology, then we can start to show how beneficial it truly can be and how it really is not harmful.

Another big topic discussed in this article is that citizens today are more digital than they ever have been in the past. We are all online now and using social media platforms now more than ever. As stated on page 52, "Citizenship today is digital. During the 2016 U.S. elections, social media did not just spread the news, it became the news." So as you can see, today we are using social media for so much more than what it may have been intended for because we are technologically driven, therefore, we use every platform of technology we can to show people our views and what we think.

A third major point that is made throughout this article is that students today cannot just be able to understand what they are being taught in school, but they need to be able to understand what is going on in the world around them through the platform of social media. If they cannot understand what is in front of them on the internet, then how are they supposed to be able to understand the different things in life that may give them trouble or different view points. "In the 21st century, students cannot just dissect frogs, sentences or documents; they must be able to dissect tweets, snaps, and posts. They must also understand how to leverage the positives of new technologies to strengthen their communities and fulfill their civic responsibilities." If they can't understand technology, then they may not truly be able to understand their duties as citizens which they need to be able to as they are our countries future.

Now as you may know by now, there are always two different sides to every article, whether someone would like you to believe that or not. The first side is the side that believes students should have access to technology in the classroom and be able to be taught about social media and the benefits and downfalls of using it. The other side to this argument is the side that thinks technology should be banned from schools, and that children should be sheltered when it comes to learning about and discovering social media.

I always like to end my blogs with a question after reading the article just to make you think and really dig deeper, and the question I have after reading this article is why are so many people against students learning about social media? They are going to have it sooner or later, so we should teach it so they know what to watch for. Thank you parents so much for spending time reading my final blog, and thank you all so much for a wonderful school year! It has been an honor having your students in class.

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Welcome back to my blog everyone. I am so excited that you all have been enjoying these past couple blogs, and I can't wait to share this next article that I have read with all of you. The next article that I have read is from the website LD, and it is called, "Assistive Technology for Student with Learning Disabilities." This is a topic I have looked forward to because I have helped in many classrooms in the past and have wanted to see how many other teachers and schools use technology to help a student who has a learning disability. One of the biggest points made in this article is the conversation of computers and how they are major tools in the point of assistive technology. They mention how these are beneficial because they are easily transportable and lightweight. This is how they can be used based on the disability, "For students with handwriting difficulties, being able to take notes on a laptop or computerized device (such as an iPad) can improve the quantity and quality of the notes (Vaughn & Bos, 2009). Using a word processor can help students to complete work that is more organized and includes less spelling errors than handwritten work (Hetzroni & Shrieber, 2004)." Computers are an amazing source of technology because they not only help students with learning disabilities, but they can help all the students in the classroom and can provide games as well as beneficial learning tools. Computers are also incredible because there are multiple apps that can be downloaded in order to help with the learning disabilities and help increase their skills that they might be behind in.

The next big tool that is discussed in this article is the tools known as mid-tech devices. Mid-tech devices are known as audio recorders, calculators and MP3 players. One major benefit of these mid-tech devices is that they are cheaper than some of the other technologies that may be higher technological devices. This article also goes in depth about explaining the multiple mid-tech tools that can be used, and how the teachers need to get used to using these kinds of tools in the future because they are bound to have at least one student who will have some type of learning disability.

One other big topic that is discussed in this article is the idea of staff training. Staff training is when someone comes into the schools and explains to the teachers what each tool they might use is and how they can use each tool in their classroom to help benefit the children. "Assistive technology devices and services have to be coupled with context-appropriate instruction from trained teachers (Specht, Howell, & Young, 2007), as students’ successful implementation of assistive technology is directly related to the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of special education teachers (Michaels & McDermott, 2003). While educators acknowledge the potential of assistive technology, they may feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of understanding and using this technology with their students (Lee & Vega, 2005; Ludlow, 2001). Many teachers feel that they lack the knowledge and support to more fully integrate assistive technology into the curriculum (Okolo & Diedrich, 2014)." So as one can see, there are actually several teachers who don't actually know how to use some tools for assistive technology. This is not good because if a teacher doesn't know how to use a tool that a student may need for their disability, then they won't be able to help the student in a way that they could if they had learned to use the tools.

Now as every article goes there are two sides to every article. One side of this article is the side that I agree with, which is the side for assistive technology and teaching the teachers how to use these tools to help benefit the students. The other side of this article is the side where the students don't really need technology for their disability and teachers really don't need to learn how to use it. This is crazy because if that is how people saw learning disabilities, then what is the point of teaching people that learning disabilities are real.

One main question this article sparks in me is why are there teachers out there who still don't want to learn about technology, especially technology that can help benefit students who may have a learning disability? Well than you all so much for reading my blog and I really hope you learned new things about what assistive technology is and how it can be beneficial in the classroom. Thank again!

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Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. I am glad you all have been enjoying the blogs so far and I hope you continue to enjoy them as new ones are posted. This next blog will be discussing another article I read recently titled "Technology Can Make Students More Intellectual." I love discussing technology in the classroom because at first I felt iffy about using it, especially with younger children, but it is a blessing in the classroom. So I can easily say that before I even read this article, I thought it was so amazing and wonderful that there is an article pointing that technology is a great thing in the classroom. One big point that was made during this article was that in order to be truly educated, you need to be an independent thinker. And the author made the point of how can this be achieved if you do not have the proper tools to be an independent thinker which is one argument made to show how technology in the classroom can be beneficial.

Another main point the author made about why technology in the classroom is so great was the topic of just in case versus just in time learning. What this is is it refers to when learning about technology is a lot more hands on. This is what I enjoy because it is so much easier to teach technology and to learn technology the more hands on it is.

This article was not a very long article, but there were several big points relating to this article. Another big topic that is discussed throughout this entire article is that as technology grows and begins to increase, then the more productivity in the human world and the more we can start to benefit from technology and the more we can interact with each other and be more productive. This is important because once we start to realize how much technology can not only benefit the classroom, but also the entire world, then we will be better equipped for more things that will occur.

Now that we've established some of the big ideas that occurs during the reading of this article, let's discuss the two different sides that are occurring throughout this article. The first side is the side who thinks technology in the classroom is amazing and so beneficial which is the side that I wholeheartedly agree with. The other side that occurs throughout this article is the side that thinks technology in the classroom is bad because it can be a distraction. I think that people who believe this need to fully experience a classroom that uses technology for the good of the classroom because if they do experience this, then they will see that technology in the classroom is wonderful and can truly help students understand topics a lot more than if there was no use of technology in the classroom.

One big question I have after reading this article is why are there so many people out there who think technology in the classroom is such a bad thing? Technology has proven to be amazing and super beneficial in so many different ways, so why when it comes the classroom is technology criticized? If you guys have any questions for me about this article, feel free to let me know. Thank you guys so much once again for taking time to read my blog. I hope it is beneficial for you and that these blogs help you all to understand more about technology in the classroom. Have a great week everyone!

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Hello everyone and welcome to my blog. Today, I am going to be discussing a very interesting article I just read about technology in the educational world. This article is called "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" by Marc Prensky. This article discusses how older teachers today are not very fond of including technology in their teaching world. There are multiple reasons for this, however, one big one the article talks about is that it's harder to learn something you already know in a new way versus learning something brand new. Most of these teachers have already been teaching for a while, so they don't really want to learn  something new now.

Another big reason is found on page 3 which talks about how teachers think technology is bad because kids can't pay attention in class and be on their technology. The author says, "Digital Immigrants don't believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music, because they (the Immigrants) can't. Of course not - they didn't practice this skill constantly for all of their formative years. Digital Immigrants think learning can't (or shouldn't) be fun. Why should they - they didn't spend their formative years learning with Sesame Street (page 3)." They haven't had the learning experience this generation has, which means that they don't want to learn new things about technology.

Another big thing discussed is the differences between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Digital Natives are typically defined as, ""native speakers" of the digital language of computers, video games and the internet. (page 1)." The author defines Digital Immigrants as, "Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of the new technology (pages 1 & 2)."

The article also talks about the two sides of the argument. The author on the one side is for technology in the classroom, and the other side of the argument is the teachers who aren't fans of technology in the classroom. The author lists all the positives of having technology in a classroom, and why it's beneficial.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article because it helped inform me of why technology is essential in the classroom. I am very confused though on why teachers aren't more willing to learn how to use technology in their classroom. I am so glad I got to read and experience this and I hope you all will do the same.

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Hello everyone and welcome to my second blog post. I really hope you enjoyed the first one where I discussed digital natives and digital immigrants. I really hope you all learned something new and that this blog was very insightful for all of you. I am so glad you decided to come back and read my second blog. This blog is fairly similar to my last one in the fact that I am going to be discussing technology in the classroom. I have a new piece if information to share with you today and I am so excited for you to get deeper into this article and to really grasp what it has to say about technology and how it relates to a classroom.

The article that I read for this blog today was called, “Understanding the Digital Generation II.” While I was reading this article, I found so many different key topics that are stated, which are very beneficial for those who may be reading this and not truly understand technology. It really made me think as an educator, that I need to make sure I use technology and use it to keep the classroom interesting because today's generation of kids is surrounded by technology, that if a teacher doesn’t have technology, then the children don’t know what to do or really don’t know how to maximize their learning.

One of the first major points I found in this article is that teachers really need to up their game and use technology in the classroom more than they may be using it now. Some teachers are fairly older than a lot of other teachers, which this means that they have been teaching a specific way for so long, that they don’t want to change how they are teaching. Since they are so used to teaching one way, which is generally without technology, then they do not want to learn how to use technology, or they claim it’s too hard so they get away with not using technology. However, now that we have entered a time period where technology is so important for everyday use, we can’t afford to have teachers who are not willing to catch up with what is happening in today’s day and age. I think as a future educator, technology is actually a very good thing because it provides so many experiences and tools that were not available before technology came along. Technology has increased dramatically in the past ten years, and now it’s time that every teacher got on bored and used their classroom to the best of their ability.

Another really big topic that I found very interesting in this article was that teachers today need to let students be able to be fully engaged in the classroom. This could mean a lot of different things depending on who you talk to, but in this article, the author states that students need to be able to access information and if a teacher doesn’t let them use technology in the classroom, then they cannot maximize their learning ability that they could have if they would have been able to use technology in the classroom. Many students today do not use books as much as they search for the topics on the internet. Due to this, we need to make sure that the students do have complete access on school grounds so they can do the research they need to in order to be prepared for class as well as to do their best in the classroom, which should be the main goal of any teacher.

Finally, a very important detail that is discussed in this article is relating to the fact that we need to start re-evaluating what we are teaching and how we are teaching. I completely agree with this finding because there are so many students today who don’t follow class because teachers are not teaching in a way that the students can truly understand and stay engaged. Students engagement is one of the most important things relating to the classroom because if your students aren’t engaged in your class, then there’s really no point to continue the teaching because no one is following along or paying attention anyways. I think once teachers rethink how they should teach, then students will actually be more engaged and classrooms will be maximized to their full potential.

Now that I’ve hit some of the main points of this article, it’s time to discuss the two major sides of this article. I know some of you may be thinking, how can there be two sides to an article when one person writes it? However, it is possible in order to write the best article they can. For this article though, the two sides are actually very similar to the two sides of the last article we discussed. And the two sides for this article are: the side that agrees that teachers need to improve their technology education as well as letting students interact more in the classroom, and the second point is the side that thinks teachers today are ok and don’t need to change anything. Whatever way you look at it, these are generally the sides always when it comes to discussing technology in the classroom. Unfortunately, there are still teachers who think that technology is not important in the classroom and that is just not true. If anyone talks to students today, they all would say that they would rather be in a classroom where technology is being used and is being used well. Since this is the case, we need to start maximizing our use of technology.

Finally, after reading these articles, I always have questions because it’s just how I think and go through different readings for anything. The main question I have is just why are so many teachers opposed to learning new things and learning how to actually use technology because that can actually make their life so much easier in the classroom? I will definitely be using technology in my classroom because I know how amazing it is and how easy it can make my life. Well thank you all so much for taking time to read this blog and I really hope it helped further your understanding of using technology in the classroom.