Blog Journal 2

     Applications such as Microsoft Word has been a great tool for me as a student; not only in my current college years, but also throughout my earlier years of school and out of the classroom! Programs such as Microsoft word and google docs allows users to create documents, tables, graphs etc. I have pretty good experience on these programs, especially google docs. However, I definitely do feel there is a large amount of tricks or tools within Microsoft word that I can't wait to hopefully continue to learn and with the information we will learn from this course! 

    In addition to this, this week we were asked to review the ISTE Standards for Educators. The ISTE Standards provide a framework to empower students and for them to become leaders. There are seven section to the ISTE Standards, and after reading a little bit about each of them the one I find most important or significant is the standard "2.1 Learner." The "learner" is an educator who continually improves there practice and explores new technology. I feel this is most important because in order to be good future educators we must constantly refresh our knowledge and keep up with new information; and we can then take this new information to facilitate our ideas and become leaders! 

    Lastly, we ended the week by discussing what the term "digital native" means, and its implications towards education. A digital native is referred to usually younger people and their relationship to technology; they are often skilled with the internet, they grew up with technology etc. Versus a digital immigrant, would be someone who is learning and becoming more skilled in technology. However, we see a problem where digital immigrants are often the ones responsible for teaching digital natives, think for example teachers  you have had that are responsible for teaching you the lecture or the PowerPoint, but may not quite know how to work the technology. This is just one example, and I have definitely experienced many more, for instance I have had teachers who may have not known how to work platforms like Canvas, or some who maybe didn't know how to play a video in class or a movie etc. And while all of these instances were definitely a barrier some might say in my learning career, they are extremely small bumps, and with teaching one another digital natives and digital immigrants can learn much from each other!