#4 - Twitter Reflection, Digital Divide, and Evaluating Websites

    On my Twitter account, I mainly tweet random things about my day and reply to the EME2040 questions of the day. The questions of the day make me think a little deeper about the things we are learning about in class, and also about their real-life applications. Additionally, I frequently retweet the tweets by my classmates that I find funny or relatable. This helps me to connect with the other people in this class. In the future, I could use Twitter to tweet descriptions or photos of what the class is doing on that particular day. I could use it to connect with parents, but I could also use a Twitter to connect with other educators. By this, we could all share ideas and learning opportunities for our classes.

    The digital divide is the divide between students who have access to technology and those who do not have access to technology. This is actually very prevalent in our world today. Like the example in the podcast, some students have technology at their fingertips. They grow up with it, and they always have the updated version of everything that comes out. But there are also students who have very limited Internet access with older computers. They have to rely on using computers at school or going to the public library. This begins to affect student success when teachers want all of their students to have technology access. For example, if a teacher assigns online homework and only half of the class has accessible Internet, only half of the class will complete the homework assignment. In this case, the class would be failing because of this. In the context of active learning software, it varies by each type. For example, if a teacher requires each student to have Microsoft Office at home, the digital divide causes many students to not be able to afford the software, or even if it is free from the school, they may not have a computer that is updated to where they can download it for free. This could cause many students to not be able to make presentations on PowerPoint, or write papers with Word. Or if a teacher requires a student to have Gimp to edit a photo, this poses the same problem as the Microsoft Word requirement. A student may not have a computer that is new enough or fast enough to hold the necessary files for Gimp on his/her computer and may not be able to complete the necessary assignment.

    The most important things to look for when evaluating websites are author, bias, content, design, and technical elements (ABCDT.) See if there is an author and if it is a credible person. Similarly, look for bias in the website (maybe politically) to see if the website is credible. Check the content of the website - if it is factual, informative, and easy to read. Look at the design of the website, see how stable a website is, how often they add new content or redesign the page. Be sure to watch out for the links on the website and thoroughly check each one, because you never know where the links might lead. Personally, I look out for websites that have misspellings or very simple grammar mistakes. As said in the podcast, it is extremely important for teachers to assess content on websites before sending it out to students.