Software in the Classroom (J4)

So far the people I interact with most on Twitter have been the people from this class on my school Twitter for the sake of finding new resources or discussing assignments. However, I also use Twitter to keep in touch with artists, writers, and creators that I love to see what they are working and what they are thinking about at the moment. I see Twitter as a powerful tool for myself and other creators to communicate with our audience and announce new projects that we are excited about. Having a medium where we can communicate our thoughts quickly and succinctly can be extremely valuable to someone in a creative field.

The digital divide can create a huge disparity in how prepared a student is for their assignments or how well they are able to perform. Because some students grew up with more access to technology do to greater affluence, wealth, or personal connections, students without access to these materials are at a significant disadvantage at using these tools despite similar levels of experience. Students from lower income backgrounds deserve to have the same chance at success in my classroom as any other student. It is my job then, as a teacher, to avoid assigning homework of such nature to my students, and instead encouraging technology-based learning experiences on school time, such as interactive games or presentations.

Personally, I would love to expose my students to programs like Word Anvil. Word Anvil is a site designed to help you create and organize all the elements of world-building for writers and role players, and is remarkably robust and intuitive. Hemingway could also be a useful application to have in the classroom! It's a writing checker that checks all spellings for you, checks if you're overusing adverbs, picks out over-complicated sentences, and so much more! A very handy tool for young writers!