blog post #5

 Ahhh. Twitter. I've been a (somewhat) faithful user of twitter since 2010, which now that I think about it, makes me feel kind of old lol. I didn't really use it much when I first joined up since I was a bit young and didn't really know how to use it properly, so I used facebook and tumblr a lot more. When I started high school in 2013, many of my other classmates had twitter accounts, so I started using it again in order to communicate with them outside of class. My peers and I had even created an IB twitter account and had fellow IB students follow it so that we could all keep up to speed with upcoming assignments, exams, etc. Since graduating, I still follow a lot of the same people from high school but have since expanded my network with the people that I've met while attending Florida State. The recently-added topics feature is also a personal favorite of mine; I now receive tailored tweets in my feed about topics in which I'm interested! I think it works really well and also exposes you to accounts and related events and topics that you wouldn't otherwise have seen. It also helps keep you abreast of world trending news, which is a major plus for getting younger populations more involved in politics and social issues. I plan to continue to utilize twitter, especially for my professional career, as I think it's a wonderful networking tool. Many organizations nowadays have social media accounts that post important information, and following other professionals within my field can make way for many opportunities.

The digital divide is an accessibility issue that affects students not only in underdeveloped countries but within the United States as well. We often forget that access to technology and wireless connection is a privilege that not everyone has. This is an issue that has been further brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic since a lot of K-12 and higher-level instruction has been temporarily moved to online schooling via platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Many students whose family belongs to a lower SES simply do not have the means to constant internet access, and in cases where there may be multiple students in one home, there may not be enough screens available for all children to be present in class. Not only this, but students living in rural areas may face even more problems, as there might be less access to the internet in general, coupled with perhaps more distance in between local resources. This obviously presents a challenge for children whose teachers expect them to be able to use extensive technology in order to complete their assignments, but can also develop into a bigger problem when attending college/university or when entering the workforce. When teaching my undergraduate students, I anticipate that there may be some students who have underdeveloped technological skills. For this, I will make sure to designate time in class to ensure that everyone knows how to navigate through specific applications we may need to use. For particularly difficult or intricate processes, I may record my screen while I perform an example so that students may follow along while doing their own assignments. In addition to this, I plan to inform students of on-campus resources such as libraries, computer labs, cafes, etc. that provide them with an internet connection and potentially computers that they can utilize for their schoolwork. 

In my future classroom, I anticipate implementing technology in a variety of ways, one specific being the use of psychology and/or research-related academic software. In my university experience, I have had to download and learn how to use many different types of software programs, and have even had to learn how to code in specific computational languages for specific programs. Since I plan on teaching courses within social and personality psychology, I would definitely like to use SONA in my classroom, as it is a great way to have students participate in departmental research. If I were in charge of a lab, I would also need to make sure that my research assistants were proficient in navigating SONA and creating forms and surveys online. Another program that I might implement in my classroom could be IBM SPSS, which is a software used for statistical analysis and is the primary software used for data collection within the social sciences. While this is more for a research methods course, I would want to make sure that my students were at least somewhat aware of its properties and how to use it in case they were interested in conducting research themselves or for other courses. It also goes without saying that lab assistants would need to understand how to use SPSS to analyze the data we would collect! I'm sure that there are other interactive tools and programs out there for psychology students, but these would probably be the most helpful for general use, so I'd want to make sure that as many students have access to these programs as possible.

"Twitter" by petesimon is licensed under CC BY 2.0