Blog Journal #5 - Using Social Media as a tool

 I have used Twitter sparingly throughout my life. I've probably made only 10 posts, 5 of which were for a project in high school. I don't like Twitter (or X, I should say); I never have. Twitter is too time-consuming and filled with too much negativity. For every tweet with comments, there will always be someone hating the content and painting the author of the post in a bad light. Lives have been ruined through tweets, and to me, that just sounds ridiculous. As such, although I technically have an account somewhere, it's neither active nor do I remember who I've followed on there. That is not to say Twitter would not be useful in one's career. Plenty of people use Twitter as a way to stay connected with a community. As a teacher, a well-kept Twitter account helps parents and employers know what your teaching philosophy is and makes you more relatable to students. I chose to stay away from it and use Instagram instead. I feel Instagram achieves the same purpose, and it's a much more positive platform. Instagram tends to stay away from the drama.

Moving on to the digital divide, this issue is not to be underestimated. I work in tech support for a massive company. I have come across many families and people of different backgrounds. It's surprisingly common how many people don't have computers or access to the internet even while owning a smartphone. It's easy to take it all for granted when you have such quick and easy access to technology on a daily basis. Technology costs so much money and yet has become a necessity if you do not want to fall behind in the world. As a result, poorer neighborhoods will experience less funding in their schools and less technology. As a teacher, I have to be prepared for this. Luckily, I've had a teacher who showed me it's not impossible to accommodate students who need the technology. My Calculus teacher in high school said she was an expert at finding and applying for grants. Turns out, there are a bunch of organizations and groups that are also aware of the digital divide. She managed to convince an organization to purchase TI-84 Plus CE calculators for every Calculus student for free. If you think she stopped there, you're wrong. The following year, she managed to get another grant that allowed her to purchase an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil so she could take digital notes for the class that they could then access through her website. And if they didn't have access to the internet, she would print them upon request. If there was a teacher who went above and beyond to close the gap of the digital divide, it was Ms. Daire at my high school. I hope to follow in her footsteps. It also helps that the public school I went to had a resourceful principal and administrative group that managed to get the funding to help bridge the gap outside of Ms. Daire's class. 

Two software tools that I would 100% without a shadow of a doubt introduce to every student, regardless of grade level or subject matter, are PDF readers and, subsequently, note-taking applications. There are so many. Adobe PDF Reader, Books, Preview, GoodNotes, and Notability; you can also open PDFs using browsers like Internet Explorer or Google Chrome. A lot of these options come included with the technology you already have. PDFs have been around for many years, so even students with outdated technology are able to use them. It makes learning more affordable and convenient for so many students. I did not realize the power of PDFs until my English teacher in high school introduced it to us as a tool. As I mentioned before, we had a really resourceful principal and administration. One of the tools we received as students was an iPad Air for those who requested one. Instead of having us buy the book, our English teacher would share the PDFs with us for free, and we would annotate the PDF using Apple's preinstalled Books application. It was genius and very efficient because this way, she didn't have to rely on parents to buy books for the students. Even students who didn't have an iPad could open the PDFs using their laptops or smartphones.