Lily's Exceedingly Educational Education Blog

 My EME2040 Experience Over all, I have definitely enjoyed my time in this class. It has been great to get a more hands on experience with teaching software than I had before, and the assignments are usually interesting. My only critique of the class is that some of the technology being used feels slightly out of date, with some of the online teaching resources being older programs. That being said, I understand that these may just be industry standard and not an individual choice made by the class curriculum. OER Open educational resources are essentially pieces of instructional content and educational tools readily available on the internet. This means that they are easily accessible with and internet connection, and don't require the physical resources of in person instruction. The link provided below is a resource site that includes several different OER's. I would love to use these resources in a hypothetical classroom environment to introduce supplementary instruction to ...

  Teacher Website For this part of the blog, I attempted to go through the Atmos Godby High School website. Unfortunately I was unable to access individual teacher sites without aoecual login info. However, I was able to look through the main pages of the site and get a feel of what they thought was most important for the general public to know about them. This mostly included awards and student centered initiatives meant to portray a positive image for the school. The Site Using Tech Peofessionally My use of technology in a professional setting will entirely depend upon where I end up career wise. If I manage to make an art career work, then it will become a consistently important tool for my day to day work life. This is especially true given the editing and production software I consistently use as an artist even now. If I do pursue education, I would use software like Schoology to create a more communal environment. PB Works Using PB Works was certainly an interesting expe...

  My Diigo Experience  I've had a limited exposure to Diigo thus far. That being said, I do have some basic opinions on it. I think that as a classroom tool, it is useful to share important links and informative sites. This makes it more centralized and convenient for everyone in the class to see what they need to. That being said, I think the user interface feels a little outdated and could be more visually appealing.  My Blogging Experience I never had much experience blogging prior to attending this class. Now that it has been fully integrated into my educational routine, I definitely enjoy it. As someone with an aesthetic eye, it's always fun to organize my thoughts in visually pleasing ways, especially when talking about topics I'm interested in. Outside of class, I'd probably enjoy it even more without being restricted to answering specific questions, but understand that this kind of structure is necessary in a classroom environment. Web 2.0 During my years in the...

Exposure to Twitter I started using Twitter in 8th grade primarily to read tweets from artists and celebrities I was interested in. That element is still present in how I use Twitter today, but my current usage has evolved a bit too. I frequently use it to contact friends, and for a while, primarily used it for news and keeping up with global political discussions. Unfortunately, Elon Musk bought the company in late 2022, and my overall usage and faith in the site has plummeted. It is still very helpful for basic networking, but with massive employee layoffs, the consistent promotion of far right wing ideals, (particularly transphobia and Covid denial), and several detrimental changes to the site's design, my future with it is totally up in the air. The Digital Divide The digital divide is a huge problem in education today. With technology being so heavily integrated into most of our daily lives, the fact that many households don't even have internet access is unfortunately oft...

Copyright and Fair Use Generally speaking, I am of the opinion that the current copyright and fair use system is extremely antiquated  and primarily exists to line the pockets of inordinately wealthy entertainment companies, but let's not get into all of that. In theory, the copyright system is meant to provide legal protection of various forms of media and intellectual property so that said work is not stolen or appropriated without proper compensation. Fair use is a particularly complicated facet of this system which is meant to provide other creators the ability to use said materials without penalty. This is done by limiting acceptable uses of copyrighted content, (other than paid licensing), to categories such as artistic critiques, satire, commentary, and most importantly in our case, educational settings. This means that as long as there is no monetary gain associated with the material's use in the classroom, it is free to use.  To go on an amusing tangent that shows a b...

  My Microsoft Word Background In my previous blog entry, I talked a little bit about my broad exposure to technology in educational settings. But one of the specific programs I've used the most throughout my educational career is Microsoft Word. This started in elementary school with some of the first papers and essays I ever wrote, and for the most part, I've used it for the exact same purpose ever since. In middle school and high school I even took classes specifically dedicated to learning about various Microsoft Office applications. Currently, I use it for a variety of writing projects, but occasionally I'll use Google Docs on my phone for the sake of convenience. My Thoughts on the ISTE The ISTE are extremely valuable resources for educators and the educational community as a whole. Personally, I find the standard 2.1, Learner, to be the most meaningful for several key reasons. Standard 2.1 refers to the teacher's responsibility to keep actively learning on their ...