Blog Journal 4 - Early Twitter Usage (or Lack Thereof), the Digital Divide, and Software for Students

Welcome back! This week I want to address my usage of Twitter, and take a look at the digital divide and some software for students.

Let's start with the real elephant in the room (can that phrase be used here?), my Twitter usage. That is to say, I completely forgot my Twitter account existed. I guess I've gotten so accustomed to my usual habit of lurking on the Jaguars account that I kind of forgot the need to actually post stuff. Anyway, from this point on, I'll be setting myself a strict schedule- every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I will tweet something. I'll set an alarm for it if I need to. Maybe I'll just tweet right when my alarm goes off in the morning. Who knows?

On a bit more serious of a note, there are plenty of issues that affect students as they work toward their education. One in particular, though, is a lack of technology. Even today many students suffer from poor access to or a complete lack of up-to-date technology, often due to economic issues- there are plenty of families, after all, that barely bring in enough money to feed themselves, let alone buy expensive tech like computers. Needless to say, this lack of computer access puts students at a severe disadvantage. If a student can't use a computer often, then they don't develop computer skills as well and suffer even after school when they have to get a job and don't have the same technological familiarity. Personally, I plan on going back to my home town to teach once I graduate, and I honestly didn't know many people in my town that even owned a personal computer. A lot of people relied on one family PC- in fact, one of my friends just recently upgraded from his family's early-2000s Windows XP dinosaur to a new laptop. With that in mind, I really don't think I could tackle the issue of tech access all that well- no matter what I do, people still won't be able to access good computers at home. As such, I think the best I can do is try to make sure students have some access to school computers, even if it's just a Chromebook with a screw drilled directly through the screen (and believe me, I've had to use one of those before). Just getting students something to use is better than doing nothing, right?

Now, on to educational software. Just recently I covered Gimkit, and really I think that deserves another spot here because I swear up and down that it is leagues ahead of Kahoot. Seriously, I just watched students play it when I observed classes out at FSUS, and even just watching was at least as engaging as actually playing a Kahoot game- I was immersed in the action, watching the leaderboard constantly changing as students answered questions or missed them. Throw in all the powerups and their added tension, and you've basically got educational Mario Kart. It is perfection. As for other software I could implement, I do think it could be pretty interesting to implement Diigo in some way. I think it would make for a much more engaging, interactive way for students to do stuff like locate sources for an essay. It would give them a chance to share sources with friends, and more importantly me, the teacher, to make sure their sources are actually useful and credible.