Blog 2

In the 7th grade, I was placed in an organic agriculture class that introduced me to Microsoft Word. This was the first class to give me assignments that involved using computers to complete specific assignments. In fact, half of our classroom was a computer lab, which we frequently utilized. My teacher, Mr. Worthley, pushed us as students to explore our learning concepts further with the help of technology. He frequently assigned research projects that would involve us using Microsoft Word to answer topic questions, document data, print images for assignments, and many other things. I was always fascinated with using computers in and out of school, so playing around on Microsoft and learning to make many different documents with just a few clicks was cool. I stuck with Microsoft Word throughout my primary school days, and until recently, I switched from Word to Google Docs. I prefer Google Docs these days because I write longer papers now that often require lots of revision. The collaborative features of Docs are more convenient for this as it allows for easier editing while having all the same extraordinary abilities as Microsoft Word. 

The ISTE Standard for Educators that stood out most to me was 2.3 - Citizen. This most aligned with my hypothesis of where technology and the digital space are headed inside the classroom for future generations. This is a stronger collaboration of the digital space inside classrooms; therefore, students need digital literacy and training on media fluency. The ability to meaningfully interpret large amounts of complex information in multiple formats, as well as communicate and share across various media formats, is a vital skill to develop if we are going to incorporate more digital spaces into our lessons, given that these spaces now play a large part in most of our lives.

Although I like the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant," I don't wholly agree with the verbiage tied to it. For some, being a native has had an advantage in the rise in technology usage in everyday life. However, in my experience, educators have always been just as digitally fluent as I am in many ways. I have learned much of what I know now from exposure to it in a classroom. Outside of Social Media, I think educators that fall under the birth years associated with the "digital immigrants" are closest to us natives with being tech savvy. The difference I will have with my future students is the exact difference I have now with my educators, and that is probably our social use of technology.