Blog Post #8

The technology advancement in chapter 12 that I believe holds the biggest promise for education are the Personal Learning Environments. I found this technology to be very easy to use and simple. A Personal Learning Environment is kind of like a virtual classroom and I think that this could benefit children that aren't able to be a part of a regular classroom setting or even just as an extra source to use. A benefit of the PLE is that it is specifically for the student and designed for the student. Through this source a student can make goals and achieve them.

I would define the digital divide as the technological separation between people of different financial access. For the digital divide there is one group who can't afford accessing the internet or any other kinds of technology, and then you have the second group that come from higher socioeconomic standings and will probably have a higher chance in a greater access to technology. For me personally, I think that I have been given a greater amount of access to technology than a lot of other kids my age. I think that other kids my age have been given a great amount like me, and others haven't been given that much. In my future classroom I think that this will still be an issue as long as there is a financial divide between students. When I am a teacher, I need to remember that not all students have been given access to a lot of technology as other students may have. Also, I need to keep that in mind when giving out work to the students. I need to make sure that it doesn't involve advanced technology that not all the students may have access to.

When doing the PowerPoint assignment I was mostly frustrated. I knew how to do everything that was asked except for when it came to recording the audio I started getting confused. It was a lot of work and I didn't realize how much time it would take to do all of it. After I finished though I felt accomplished and found the voice recording to be interesting. I plan to use PowerPoint in my future career but maybe not with the voiceover. I think that posting PowerPoints to a class website after they are presented, can be incredibly helpful to the students.