Coding activities can fit into classrooms in many ways. Having the ability to teach children how to be able to use technology at an earlier age will benefit them in the long run. I feel that incorporating coding into children’s education will help them to be more successful in their future. Since coding is being taught in elementary schools now, students can become proficient with computers at earlier ages compared to older generations. (Which is great) I wish that I was taught more about computer science at an earlier age, but the times were different back then in the 1990s and 2000s. I remember having to go to a computer lab throughout kindergarten to Senior year in high school. Students now in elementary schools are very lucky to have technology being incorporated within their classrooms. Having witnessed classrooms with students being able to use laptops throughout the year is incredible. I like that with coding, students will be able to master computers at a young age and hopefully avoiding having to learn simple skills in their future.

I feel that the value of providing opportunities for my future students to experience coding is very high. I would definitely want my future students to be apart of this and be able to learn coding from an early age. Not many people had the ability to learn this in general unless they taught themselves or majored in computer science in college. I think the value of teaching coding in elementary schools is high and needed since it could help students become proficient in the use of computers and technology. Coding seems like a boring skill to have, but it can make someone really self-sufficient and in the real world, you need to be independent and self sufficient to survive. Many professions would agree that someone having multiple computer skills that includes coding to be a great asset. I feel that teaching coding at young ages now, can absolutely benefit that person in the long run. The more students learn at younger ages can only benefit them in the long run.

Having technology in classrooms is so much better that only using chalk and chalkboards. Technology allows for creativity to flow freely and allows teachers to create lesson plans that are entertaining and not boring. I know certain topics in education could stay being boring, but technology could potentially spice every topic up and be entertaining for students. Students nowadays seem to respond easier when technology is used, and they do not always seem to being using technology for social reasons. I know I use technology to edit pictures or videos. There are so many forms of technology that can be used in classrooms. The simple ones are videos, having more videos in classrooms is great in my opinion. Nothing was better than seeing that TV strapped to a rolling stand come into my classrooms back in the day. With computers being available in classrooms, videos can be watched for any subject and topic.

While we had our first synchronous class last week, we all were discussing presentation skills and how to make a presentation the best that it can be. We covered the Do’s and Don’ts of presentations and public speaking. Eventually we got to multiple slides full of information to help us students prepare fabulous presentations in the future. These resources that were provided to us are great tools to help us all have great presentations. There were multiple resources that stuck out to me and that interested me, but for the sake of this blog I am only going to reflect on one of them.

The resource that I gravitated to is called Unsplash. This website is full of amazing photography that can be used on your slides or in presentations. The best part, the website is FREE to use. No sign up, no payments, no upgrade now to get the rest of the platform. This website has images of food to landscapes to animals. There is a search bar where you can search for what you want instead of looking through the categories on the home page. I know for myself; I love making slides colorful and pretty. I want my slides to stand out compared to others who just use a typical template version from either PowerPoint or Google Slides. As I am new to using Google Slides, I learned how to use an image for a background on a slide and I found that super awesome. So, bringing this back to Unsplash, I now have a resource where I can have multiple images to use for my future slides and even as backgrounds on those slides.

https://unsplash.com/

Recently in another class, we had to give a presentation on a lesson plan that we wrote. I chose to create my presentation on the Solar System for Fourth Grade students. Using my new found knowledge of using images as backgrounds, I proceeded to put every planet Image as the background of a slide in order to be able to give a few facts about each planet. I also included a slide for the sun and Pluto. I loved my presentation because it was creative and was not just a typical slide template. The struggle I did find with using images, finding the text and color that match well for every slide became difficult. I made it work and created a nice presentation on the Solar System.

Flipped Classroom is a great way to use technology in a classroom because it gives the students the feel of being in class and learning, but hopefully from the comfort of home. I feel that this kind of technology could be used for studying for tests or the SOL tests. For the teacher it would take time to prepare for the videos, record the videos and then edit the videos. I think this is a great resource to use for technology in the classroom. It provides that extra explanation about any subject where a student may need that.

I enjoyed making my Flipped Lesson on First Grade Math. I had fun creating my props for my video and actually figuring out how to use them among all of my recording fails. I eventually did come up with a Flipped Lesson video about US Currency. The props I created were all of our current forms of US Currency. I printed out images of all the coins and all the dollar bills and taped them to index cards. On all of the index cards I wrote the name of the coin or dollar bill with how much money each are worth. I was able to use these props in my video to go through and give brief description on all of them. I focused more on the coins, with a deeper focus on the penny, nickel and dime. My lesson plan objective stated that students will be able to identify coins and count various coin collections. After all of my brief descriptions, I proceeded back to the coins and taught on how to add coins together. At the end of my video, I gave 2 examples of adding coins together using my dry erase board.

I really liked creating a video of myself teaching because it really made me get into that so called “Teacher Mode” and try to sound like a teacher, use correct/appropriate language and present the information in a way that students can understand. I definitely still need practice since this video was my first Flipped Lesson ever, so I am sure it is a little rough around the edges. I feel that I can only get better with practice, right?

https://edpuzzle.com/assignments/5d2e8d34aada3c40985b118a/students

When you hear the words copyright or patent, they could leave you with an odd taste in your mouth. I say that because to me, when I hear copyright or patent, I think of lawsuits of how people have used something that infringed on the rights of a certain copyright or patent. Copyrights and patents are attached to so many different types of things in the world. They can be attached to something as small as a motherboard in a computer to a massive piece of an airplane to song lyrics. The lists goes on and on. As long as items/materials are still being invented and created, copyrights and patents will always be around. Copyrights date back to the early years of the United States. An interesting fact stated by one of the copyright videos was that Alexander Graham Bell known for inventing the telephone only received the credit because he beat Elisha Gray to the patent office by a mere 2 hours. So, since Bell received his patent, he was the one to go down in history to be known as inventing the telephone. The lesson learned there would be to always take the correct path when you want to invent something and get your patents as soon as possible!

Copyrights and patents are very important to have because if you create something, copyrights and patents will protect you and your invention from people trying to mimic or steal your invention idea. When I worked at my previous job which was a medical device company, we had a wall in one of our buildings loaded with patent plaques from all of our many creations within the medical device industry. The wall was packed from floor to ceiling with our patents and those were not even all of them. I was lucky enough to assist in organizing all the patents in alphabetical and numerical order before they were hung on the wall. Everyone will come across copyrights and patents in their everyday lives and it is truly normal now to see the unique copyright symbol© on just about everything you own and even look at.

I found it very interesting that copyright and fair use laws allow educators to have so much freedom when it comes to using different items or materials in their classrooms. I like that these laws are kind to educators because it would be hard to teach if everyone was trying to sue every educator all over the country and/or world for what they are teaching. For example, if a teacher wants to make copies of an article that goes along with their social studies lesson, they have the choice to make enough copies for every student in the class. As long as educators give credit to the source of their used material/item, they can use it within their classroom to teach a lesson. Another point from the videos was that educators can not decrease the value of the material or item being used to help teach, otherwise that could end up in a lawsuit.

So since copyrights and patents do not seem to be leaving any time soon, we all will have to make sure that we are using and appropriately citing our sources properly to give credit to where it is due. For everyone who wants to invent or create something brand new, make sure you get your copyrights, trademarks and patents as quickly as possible! Do not end up like Elisha Gray, kicking yourself because your competitor beat you to the patent office.

Happy Inventing Y’all 😊

Chapter 4 – Are Sexual Predators Lurking Everywhere?

It’s scary to think about all the sexual predators out there in the world, lurking in the shadows or behind technology screens for their next victim. This chapter went explained why some parents have a fear of letting their teenagers use social media. Social Media began its journey in this world in the early 2000s. MySpace was one social media platform created first and this platform began raising anxieties and fears in many adults of children and even children themselves. Parents have every right to be worried or have anxiety about their children and who they are communicating with. There are very sick and disgusting people out there wanting to hurt others and even children. For example, today as I am typing this, I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed and saw an article about a 23-year-old college girl who had been missing for almost 2 weeks was found murdered and burned in a house. I know this girl is not a teenager, but she is a daughter to some parents out there. Apparently, the college girl met up with someone she was communicating with online and something happened and now she is dead. The little I read in the story, it said that she was found in a house and her body plus her belongings were burned. I am sure her parents and family are wondering what happened or who this mystery person that she met up with is. Possibly could be having thoughts of all the what ifs that they could have said to her to make her more aware of the dangers on social media.

Social media has made it so much easier for sexual predators to find victims from all over the country and/or world. Predators can use these platforms and lie about who they are to lure their victims in and once they agree to meet up, its usually too late. In this chapter, the infamous show To Catch A Predator was discussed. This show basically would have a person as bait usually a teenager’s age range and would plan to meet up. When the person got to the house, the bait person would step out into another room and the host Chris Hansen would come in. The predator would be arrested and taken off to jail. That show just opened the eyes of many about the dangers of social media. For me, it really made me be more conscience as to what I put out into the worldwide web. To this day, my dad still will say stuff about having a digital footprint and to keep it as minimal as possible.

I lived through the creation of social media in the early 2000s and was a teenager at the time. My first social media platform was AOL instant messenger o also known as AIM. I created my screenname when I was 10 years old, so that was even before I was technically a teenager. My parents had the typical concerns like I read about like do not talk to strangers when you are online or anywhere in public. I feel like I used AIM the most in middle school and some in high school, but during the hay day entering random chat rooms and requesting everyone to say their A/S/L (Age, Sex, Location) was the norm. May not have been the smartest thing to reveal about yourself, but I never seemed to be highly worried about it because I knew better than to give out my address or any other important information about myself. I remember one time talking to this guy who lived in Hawaii at the time, I was probably 13-14 and I felt like such a rebel by doing that without my parents knowing. Luckily nothing ever happened, and I lost touch with the Hawaiian guy. Sadly AOL Instant Messenger/AIM was officially ended recently if I am remembering correctly. Oh the memories I will forever have. 😊

MySpace was the next form of social media that I obtained at the request of my friends. I enjoyed personalizing my profile and picking my Top 8 friends to be listed on my profile. I remember many fights happened due to the ordering of the Top 8 friends on people’s profile pages. Petty fights in my opinion. I also got a Facebook profile within months of making my MySpace profile. I remember being one of the first people to have a facebook since it was opened up to high schoolers. When facebook was created it was meant for college students only and to see how much it has grown is insane. I currently have multiple social media platforms, but I do not use them as frequently as other people do. I have Facebook, SnapChat, Instagram and now Twitter.

Chapter 8 – Searching For A Public Of Their Own

I am sure many of you remember being an angsty teen and wanting space from your parents to spend time with your friends alone. What did you all do to remedy that? Go to the mall? The movies? Other public place? Many teenagers feel the same way, they want space from their parents and privacy. They feel that they are grown up and know what to do and how to deal with negative situations. Again, as stated above, predators lurk everywhere just waiting for that perfect moment to snatch up their next victims. Due to all the dangers and predators in the world, kids/teenagers feel forced to stay home or stay at friends houses. The world is just not safe anymore to be able to allow the freedom that teens from the past were able to experience. In this chapter, one of the little stories mentioned how a teenage girl was not willing to walk or bike around her neighborhood since her friends were about 10 miles away or more. This girl did not even want to do a simple walk or bike ride because of the dangers that her parents told her about and how anything can happen anywhere. And yes, anything can happen anywhere, but you also only have one life to live. Nothing is better than to live in the present and enjoy the life that you have while you have it.  

When I was growing up, I remember spending tons of time at the mall, movies or even public park areas just to get some time with friends away from our parents. I guess in the moment I was just having a good time, but many times predators can attack in public places. I know as a teen; my friends and I found many public areas to have that alone time that we were desperately craving for. Being in school, just wasn’t the same because we typically would get yelled at if we were talking to much to our peers. I remember freshman year in high school, my best guy friend and I got separated in one of our classes because we were talking too much and causing disruptions to my teacher as he taught. It was mostly my best friend being stupid and he ruined that opportunity for us to sit together in class.

Teenagers just want a place where they can spend time with friends away from their parents, but also away from the terrible situations from being prey to a predator would entail. Adults would probably be supportive of this idea if every town could create a building where teenagers can hang out, dance together, play games or sports, have food and also be safe all at the same time. This place should include metal detectors and security guards just to keep the atmosphere safe while these teens have fun. Just an Idea to think about for our future generations. Another option, could be to add some more time to the school day in order to create time within class or classes for students to socialize for a little while. If that cannot be done, create a block period where students can meet up in a courtyard area or another specified location where they can socialize for awhile during the school day. I am not sure how this could be remedied, but finding some kind of option would be great.

As long as social media is around, predators will be lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on their unsuspecting victims.

Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning principles include multiple means of engagement, multiple means of representation and multiple means of action and expression. The more I read about Universal Design for Learning, it made me want to incorporate it more into my future classroom. I want to be able to do as much as I possibly can to help my future students to be successful in my class and even in life. Having multiple means in the ways I will teach, assess the students and engage my students is definitely what I want to do. I do not want to become a boring teacher who just tosses up 50 slides a day only and uses paper tests as assessments. I want to be a creative classroom where my students can prove to me that they know the knowledge in any way that they are comfortable.

How can technology help teachers individualize teaching materials to make learning engaging and challenging for all students?

Technology has come so far since I was in school and I am so interested in all the many forms of technology that educators are integrating into their classrooms. By the use of technology, students could be given the information, have multiple means of engagement and even be assessed using a form of technology. For example, PearDeck is an interesting way to teach students because the teacher can ask questions of the students and they can respond using technology. The teacher can even lock all the screens of the students, that way the teacher knows everyone is paying attention and learning. Technology can be used to come of with many forms of engaging activities for students to be able to learn and get their hands on the activity to really understand. For example, if students are learning about currency, fake currency can be bought and provided to the students so they can see what each coin looks like and can learn from it. On the website Symbaloo, there are many games for math where learning about currency usually is integrated. Symbaloo has games where students can practice adding prices on items to get a total cost. Using technology to have students use games to learn is also a great way to keep the attention of students. Students who are bored in a class may not be as willing to learn from that educator.

How does Universal Design for Learning apply to assessments?

Universal Design for Learning can apply on assessments because an assessment of a student can be preformed multiple ways. Some students are okay with taking a 20-question test, while others may feel that a 20-question test does not assess their knowledge properly. I know for myself growing up, I always got anxiety before taking tests (especially very important ones) and that anxiety would cause my mind to go blank on the test. I would know the content that the test was about, but just could not think of the answers. It was crazy that I dealt with that and having some form of Universal Design of Learning could have helped me growing up in school. Having the students be assessed in multiple ways can confirm that the content taught was actually absorbed and interpreted correctly by the students. The chapter discussed that having multiple means of representation is very important for a student to be able to understand what is being taught. People learn in different ways, so just reading from a textbook and teaching from slides will not be enough for every students needs. Students with dyslexia would struggle taking a typical test on paper, but if they could record a video or create something related to the content in place of a typical test, I feel that should be considered and integrated into classrooms.

How does Universal Design for Learning help maintain high standards and goals for every learner?

I feel that Universal Design for Learning helps to maintain high standards and goals for every learner because all students are able to benefit and be successful under this system. Teachers should integrate this kind of learning into their classrooms in order to help every student that they have. Students being taught with this program will have options in how they would like to learn or how they are assessed about the knowledge that they gained. For example, a student may not have good handwriting, so they would prefer to make a video answering all the questions being asked on the quiz or test. Teachers being flexible is definitely great and letting their students prove that they know the content in other forms besides a test is more fun in my opinion.

The Four C’s are very important to education and teaching because these skills allow a student to expand their knowledge and express who they are and will grow up to be. If students are taught to use these skills early on, they will master them by adulthood. I feel that if you are well off in using these Four skills, that person will do quite well in life and be successful. Being successful does not necessarily mean in terms of money. I plan on integrating all of these skills into my teaching and my classroom in many ways and forms. I want to better the future of this country and make them stronger and smarter than me.

I plan on using Communication by using many different methods. As a teacher, I would like to use many outlets to either communicate with parents, students, coworkers, bosses, etc. A few examples are emails, social media, phone calls, texts, blogs, conferences, one on one talks with students, etc. I feel that the use of emails is a top form a communication for adults now. In my previous job, email was a main form of communication. With teachers, I feel that email will also be a big form a communication and getting information to and from one another. Emails can even be used to update parents on how their student is doing in class or even update them on if their student caused a problem. I feel that a phone call or in person meeting would be better to discuss a problem with a student, that way the teacher and parent(s) can work together to come up with an Action Plan. Social Media is another form of communication and many people these days has a form a social media. I recently created a twitter account in order to use that when I am a teacher in my future classes. My students and their parents will be able to follow me and get updates about class or other events happening at school or around the area. I will be honest, I had some negative opinions about creating a twitter account, but I gave in and figured it is for the good of my future students. I will do whatever it takes to keep up with technology! Communication is very important, so having multiple forms and channels for anyone to reach me or get a hold of me is important to me.

For Creativity, I plan on using that a lot for my teaching career and will strive to help get my students to be creative as well. Being creative seems to be really fun and you get to use your imagination to come up with many ideas. For teaching, I will use creativity to come up with & write lesson plans, activities for students to do to help them learn and with how I act around students (no one wants a boring, monotoned teacher). With writing lesson plans, I can do research on the internet or social media platforms to uncover ideas on how to make a lesson plan not so boring. For example, if the students were learning about US Currency, I could play a YouTube video about money from Flocabulary. By doing that, students could get excited about learning and want to hear more of what I have to say. A social media that I love to use for ideas is Pinterest. I can search on Pinterest to find fun activities for the subject and topic that my lesson plan is about. The use of technology has made being creative so much easier in the sense that it is very accessible now. I definitely want to be a fun teacher in a way that I make learning entertaining and my future students will learn better if they don’t realize what they are doing is schoolwork. I have a very creative side to my brain, so this will be my time to let that part out and express myself through being creative for education.

I plan on using Collaboration by teaching and guiding my students that working together or as peers is great and should be done more than it has been in the past. Collaborating does not stop once you have graduated from college. Having to collaborate continues to the real world and when you have a job, working with your coworkers is a form of collaboration. Even Gertrude from Accounting who you think is super annoying, you must collaborate with her too. This skill is best learned when a person is young that way, they will have time to master this skill. Working in a group can be difficult because some people are the smart ones who do all the work while others are lazy and do not do anything. That spectrum of attitude never leaves when it comes to collaboration in the real world, it still happens, and I have witnessed it in my past. I want to teach my students in ways that they will be working together and doing so respectfully. I even want to come up with activities to do with my future students that we will come together as a large group to work together to complete a task. Making collaboration more fun and disguising it to a degree is the best way to use this in education.

Critical Thinking is very important when being used to discuss Education and Teaching. I want to teach my future students how to think and how to think better, faster and smarter. Being able to think quickly will help the student on many activities that they will face in life. I want to find fun ways to help students use critical thinking and maybe some acronyms to help them learn different topics. Critical Thinking is a necessity to have in life, so having this skill taught at a young age is great in my opinion. Students will use critical thinking when doing homework, making decisions, doing tests, talking with friends/teachers/other adults, etc. This is a skill that a person will need their whole life and the better they are at using it, the better off they will be in life.

I chose the Social Learning Site, Symbaloo to use during this semester. My first reactions to this site are that it has so many different options and categories to help children learn. As I dug a little deeper into the site, I started playing some of the games that Symbaloo offers. I enjoyed every game I played and the amount I played did not even scratch the surface of how much potential this Social Learning Site has. For example, I played a geography game through the Turtle Diary icon on the EDU tab on my account and this game made you categorize different countries by their flag or the country/continent shaded in on a map. I found this game very interesting and embarrassingly enough hard to successfully complete. I am excited that I picked this one and I feel like a guinea pig testing this site for my future students. Below I will answer 3 of the questions given in this assignment.

What’s the End Goal of the Website?

In my opinion, the end goal of this Social Learning Website is to assist and help students better themselves in many subjects throughout many ages. The age range I noticed so far is usually between Kindergarten and Sixth Grade. With those years there are many subjects and topics to cover, so there are a wide variety of learning options to be able to suit any student. The success is the number one goal of this Site.

Is the User Experience Pleasant and Intuitive?

So far my brief experience with Symbaloo has indeed been pleasant and Intuitive. I agree with how the site is setup with various Icons to pick from. There seems to be ways to customize this site to personal likings which is great in my opinion. When I took some time to explore Symbaloo further, it sucked me in for a good 30 minutes with just testing out some of the various games. And there is so much more that seems like can be completed on this Site. For example, when I clicked on the Turtle Diary Icon, it takes me to that home page and I see grades to pick from and various subject/topics to pick from. That is all just in 1 icon! I find that pretty awesome and helpful for students, teachers and parents. I am starting to wish I had more of these technology advances when I was growing up. I also got excited because a game I played back in the 1990s when I was in Elementary School was called Math Blaster and Symbaloo has an updated version of this game which is so neat. I have not been able to play this updated version yet, but definitely plan on trying it. I also feel that if I pay for a membership, I will be able to benefit from a whole lot more.

How can this site help you in the future?

I feel that Symbaloo will end up being extremely beneficial to me, but even more for my future students. I would want nothing less than to see my future students being successful at anything I throw their way. I feel that being able to test this site out for myself during this semester will help me learn about Social Learning Sites and how to make my way around Symbaloo to make it work the best for myself. My future students could use this site in class for practice, at home to keep practicing or as additional assistance if they are struggling with a certain topic, etc. I see this site as being fun to use and I can also see children enjoying this playful learning site.

In the world today, many people have multiple social media accounts and profiles. Social Media has made it easier to stay connected to friends, family and celebrities all over the world. It gives us a glimpse of how that person is doing, what that person has on their mind, their opinions about different topics, etc. Many sources have tried to figure out why social media is as important as it is among the youth of today. Frontline’s video “Generation Like” emphasized how the younger generations handle technology differently by wanting social acceptance, creating new jobs/business through social media and becoming famous/celebrity.

First, in Frontline’s video “Generation Like” it references how the younger generations want to gain social acceptance via social media. I feel that social acceptance is a valid point when it comes to social media because a child and/or teenager wants nothing else but to fit in and be accepted amongst their peers. Being accepted amongst peers is quite possibly the number one idea going through all children’s minds between kindergarten and senior year in high school. So, when social media came around in the early 2000s, people took to this kind of platform in able to create an area to express themselves. I feel that social media has taken over the world in a sense that can hinder people from being able to enjoy life to the fullest. I see so many people constantly on their phones checking social media for hours a day. I am also guilty of that. The first social media platform that I created was MySpace back when I was in 8^th or 9^th grade. I remember picking out my background wallpaper, adding some popping music from the early 2000s and even picking my 8 “best friends”. I remember having arguments with my friends about the order of the 8 “best friends” listed on my profile. And this is where social media starts to affect a child and his/her urge to be accepted. Fast forward a little bit to now, I currently have Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. For all of these platforms and more, the more followers you have and the more likes you get, the more popular you are to your peers. In my opinion, social media has brain washed the human race and no one can go a day without checking any form of social media anymore.

Secondly, in Frontline’s video “Generation Like” it references how the younger generations are using social media to create business for themselves or make jobs out of social media. I feel like this is completely true among children and teenagers nowadays because there has been a major increase in presence of social media personalities. In this video, it briefly talked about a YouTube star named Shane Dawson who is now 30 years old. Shane Dawson has been making YouTube videos for over 10 years now and he currently has 10.7 million followers on Instagram, 3.7 million followers on Facebook and 21.6 million followers on YouTube. I actually have seen many of Shane’s videos and I would consider myself a fan. Using Shane Dawson as an example shows that a teenager can go on YouTube, create and upload videos and if the universe likes what they see it can potentially skyrocket that teenager into becoming a millionaire. Another example would be the Paul Brothers, Logan and Jake. Both of them have created their own empires using various social media platforms over the past handful of years. Now both brothers have their own clothing lines, other forms a branded merchandise that fans can buy and both of them are below the age of 25. In my opinion, social media is creating more jobs for the younger generations who have the drive and desire to do that kind of job.

Lastly, in Frontline’s video “Generation Like” it references how the younger generations want to become famous through social media in hopes of being recognized and making a name/presence for themselves. In this video it was discussing how younger kids and teenagers will work diligently to become a top fan of some social media star or even big-name celebrity. This is happening because the thought of being recognized by someone famous could potentially make that child and/or teen more popular among their friend group/classmates. I feel that this kind of social media interaction between a fan and celebrity could be related to or similar to when someone actually meets a famous person in real life. Before social media took over, there were many stories over the years of fans meeting different celebrities in person. Those stories are still the best even though having a celebrity re-tweet your tweet can be pretty awesome too. Social Media has made it easier for fans and famous people to communicate with each other and to interact better. For me, I find it pretty interesting to follow famous people on social media and to see what they are like as a person and seeing their likes and dislikes. Famous people are only human just like us normal folks, so being able to connect with them is pretty interesting. Social Media has definitely made it easier to interact and have people make a name for themselves.

In conclusion, Frontline’s video “Generation Like” explains how social media has had a major influence on humans and how it will never disappear. Social Media has its Pros and Cons, but many people seem to be able to create successful business off of different platforms and now they themselves are famous. In my opinion, social media can make growing up more challenging now than it already is for children, but if used properly and in healthy doses it should be fine for the child.

Social Media is here to stay.

The standard that I plan on using as a target during this semester is that I am going to complete all assignments on time, participate in class to be able to understand all material, study all course materials, etc. I want to use my time wisely and be able to succeed during this PDS program. I plan to hold myself to a high standard in order to be successful. Learning about the 4Cs in Education allowed me to understand that those characteristics help to a student to become successful. I plan on using collaboration when I am working with my cohort on group projects, during class discussions and communicating with my cohort in general and about classes. Being able to collaborate efficiently is what I plan to do. I am sure I will even learn how to expand my skills when it comes to collaboration as well. I am going to use Critical Thinking when I am doing all course assignments, class discussions, group projects, Field Experiences, etc. Critical Thinking can be used over a wide area during the course of a class. I want to be able to challenge myself since I have not been in a college class in a few years and do not have experience in the Education field regarding teaching. I think that being able to learn and think about all the material it will help me to understand it. Communication will be used to talk to my cohort, my professors and other individuals that I find the need to communicate with during any of my classes during this PDS Program. Communication is a very important skill to have and to be successful with. Learning to communicate effectively can take a lifetime to perfect, but as long as the person wants to better themselves, they will not have a problem with communication. For creativity I feel that can be used the best with class assignments and class discussions. I feel that I will be able to let my creative side flow more during this course and all my other classes during this program. I have a very creative brain and enjoy using my imagination. Being creative is a skill that I am glad that I have. For example, setting up this blog page, I enjoyed creating it and customizing it to how I would like it.