Charlies FUNtastic Blog

    This past week we were challenged with the task of designing a website in the style of a k-12 educator. This website was to explain about the teacher (myself), homework, classwork, etc. I have only designed a few websites in my time, similarly for assignments but the tool Weebly was easier than anyone I've used. They made designing easy, fun, and rewarding. Looking at my work I was proud of what I had created and the application made that possible. I learned tons of new skills within the process but more importantly, I got a feel for how a teacher should set up their website to ensure that students feel that materials are easily accessible while maintaining of the level of professionality and fun. In the future, I will make a website for my students so I saw this as a practice for that. It not only made me excited about teaching but genuinely made me feel grateful that I had taken this class. I am so excited to be an educator and this course gives me an opportunity to dip ...

    For this blog, we were instructed to infiltrate a teacher's website and analyze it. Like Jason Borne in Mission Impossible, I made my way to the Leon High School faculty website page and found myself in a new world, the world of "Ms. Crooks Classroom". This website was great as it gave me ideas for my website which I will eventually make and had an easy-to-use format that made navigation easy. The website is completely made up of hyperlinks, you click on one to get you to the next page, and so on. This website consisted of different information about World History Honors,  US History Honors,  AP Research,  Contact Information, and more all accessible to both students and parents. The two history-based pages contained different outlines and information for the units while to contact page provided a way to better access the instructor. Overall a good website with easy usage. Not that it's necessarily my place but I give the site a 7/10 because I found it ...

       My experience with Diigo has been a good one that is growing as we continue with the material in class. At first, I was hesitant to engage with the forum because I personally believe the layout lacks feng shui and seems a little outdated in its design. Beyond my personal problems with the aesthetics of the website, it has a relatively easy function which has made access to new materials near trouble-free. My relationship with posting has been minimal as I was confused about the distinction between Diigo and PBWorks but I intend to post more in the coming weeks.       Blogging is fun because I see it as a stage at times. I’ve always been a performer and I see something like a blogging forum as no different as any other audience. Blogging is traditionally done in a diary entry style format but I appreciate the idea that you can address the audience in a “meta” style. I’ve learned different ways of uniquely addressing the audience while mainta...

    My earliest experience with twitter dates back to my brother's high school graduation. At this event, there was a jumbotron that displayed tweets from family members if they used a certain hashtag. With my parent's permission *wink wink*, I downloaded the app and wrote "happy graduation Andrew we love you". Around five minutes later my tweet was displayed on the screen and my Twitter fame began. Now I use the app for mostly news and some meme-related content. Me and my friends share news threads with one another and this has not only allowed me to have more access to news but also news that comes from a small journalist. Twitter would allow me to share different articles and stories with students in a manner that feels less formal than in other academic settings. Beyond that, they would have access to materials in a different way.     The digital divide is the gap that separates a generation of those who benefited from access to technology and those who did not. ...

      Being as that I want to be a professor and teach on a collegiate level I chose the grade level 11-12 to understand what students who are older would need to understand. The standard I chose was LAFS.1112.W.3.8, this standard is about giving students relevant, digital, and scholarly sources to ensure a good flow of ideas and an understanding of the technology itself as a resource. Students who are exposed to good resources and have a grasp on how to obtain those resources will in turn be overall at research and developing papers. Knowing how to cite these papers and avoid plagiarism is all a part of the standard. I feel that with some material that I would have provided to me I would be able to effectively implement this standard. I had good teachers who exposed me to scholarly resources and ways to get to them so I'm excited to do that with other students.      The CPALMS Educator Toolkit is a good resource that allows teachers to have access to vario...

     Copyright and fair use are both laws that exist to uphold the standards of intellectual property in the United States. These laws protect individuals who have "copyrighted" work and can be used to harm those who use their work. Personally, I believe intellectual property laws are bad and feel like I have been learning about them since middle school. For me, I like to think about the idea behind intellectual property laws more holistically. Intellectual property is nothing more than a way to attach a profit incentive to an idea. I propose two scenarios. In scenario A when there is a global pandemic different scientists representing different organizations and corporations all take their hand in creating a vaccine because they know their intellect was going to be protected post-vaccine creation. Protection in this scenario means they are able to profit off of the vaccine and none of these "competitors" can work on their vaccine. This creates competition so that t...

      My relationship with Microsoft Word as a student throughout my K-12 and now collegiate life has been nothing short of complicated. Growing up I was fortunate enough to receive my first laptop in 7th grade, a hand-me-down from my sister, with this I was able to have access to a whole new world of entertainment, academic productivity, and lots more. When it came time that I needed a source to electronically write on I chose MS Word as that is what was available to me. As time went on I came to find it incredibly helpful and became what some would call a 'staunch' Word supporter. This was only proliferated by my involvement with debate in which I found myself using a computer mouse that had additional buttons that I had programmed to make debate-style documents easier to make on MS Word. Then, in the ladder half of my senior year, I watched a video about google docs and decided to make a hard switch to the software in College. Since I have been a user I have been thoro...