Blog Post #3

       The ELA technology standards I believe I could teach the best would have to be the “Multimedia” Literature and Informational Text requirements. I have always felt comfortable, analyzing and comparing different works across various media, and now that I have learned how to use some of the more advanced features on word and been introduced to a few really helpful websites, I am confident that I could combine different medias and produce a presentation. To be completely honest, there are many more ELA Technology standards that will require a little bit more learning, but the hardest for me will definitely be SL.5 9-12.

        Personally, I would love to be a middle school teacher. I know middle school can be hard but for some reason, they interest me the most. Most middle school students range in the ages 12-14 so they will need to feel like they are not being treated like “babies” and they will probably be more inclined to use technology. For this age group, I think the use of a class blog would be a great idea. It would be a great way to communicate with their peers, receive help and check up on posted assignments, all while under the supervision of the teacher. Middle school kids can be brutal and mean, especially when it comes to social media, but at the same time middle school students love social media. A blog would be safe where students would be constantly having to use “netiquette” and because it would be teacher regulated, students would not have to worry about strangers attempting to steal their private information. Also, if there was a class blog, students would need to check it occasionally for assignments and therefore, the students would gain experience in participating on an online community.  

       Believe it or not, the newsletter design practically taught me how to use word. All I was able to do before this assignment was type words, change font and size, change color, an add double space. I enjoyed every thing about this assignment, I thought it was super fun and helpful. There are not many times that I actually get excited about a project, but this was one of those times when the moment I got home I started the project. This assignment has already helped me in another class this semester. In my Russian fairy tales class, we had to do a project that required two column formatting, which I had just recently learned from creating my newsletter for this class. Next time, I would like to have more help on how to construct the graphs and how to insert and delete columns. I struggled with the graphs because I was unsure of what all the fancy buttons up top in the insert tab were used for. Overall, I think that this was a fun project and it will definitely help me in the future whenever I have/want to use Word.