issues in technology

Sarah is discussing two topics in her master's class: digital literacy and universal design for learning. She emphasizes the importance of teaching children how to evaluate online sources and use critical thinking skills. Digital literacy also involves deconstructing and understanding what they are looking at online. Universal design for learning focuses on creating inclusive and accessible environments for all students, including the use of technology. Sarah mentions her own experience with the digital divide in her school district, where some students lack internet access at home. Despite not having strong connections to these topics, she recognizes their significance and discusses them in her presentation. Hey, y'all. I'm Sarah, and I am in one of my last classes for my master's. I have a bachelor's in history, and after that, decided to get into teaching. So through Ball State, I did my transition to teaching, and then added, decided to finish up at Ball State with my master's. The two issues I'm going to be talking about today are the digital literacy and the universal design for learning. With digital literacy, it's an integral part of a child's life from a very young age, and really understanding what we're looking at and how to know we're looking at is true and factual, and being able to understand that and understand really what we're using. I know in my preschool classroom, it's always hilarious to watch the students figure out how to turn on the art Promethean boards on and off, and being able to figure out which button they need to hit to turn the touch back on, because we turned the touch off so they wouldn't click on different songs to listen to, and watch them just through watching us see what they are doing, like, on how to do it. In digital literacy, you almost don't always think about, even though we know, when we're looking at sources or looking at web tools, that we need to evaluate and look at, is this going to be helpful, useful, is this correct, true? I don't always think, oh, yeah, I need to make sure my students know how to do that. Looking at this, it was kind of nice to be reminded, oh, yeah, we need to make sure we teach them these skills and how to evaluate and use their critical thinking skills to understand what they're looking at. And through the digital literacy, like, being able to deconstruct, like, what they're being shown and use their critical thinking to see if it's, or just to more or less understand more of what they're looking at. Because so many were online for so much of our day, and we need to be able to know and promote how to discuss and, like, know that we're showing respect and empowering students to be learners through the technology that they're using. And then the universal design for learning is showing, like, ways people learn and being more universal about it, being able to, making sure everything we're using is usable, accessible, and inclusive. And that's how we really want our classrooms to be also, because not only is it talking about technology, but it's also talking about the environments of our classrooms and schools, making sure that we're accommodating and flexible for all students and not just certain ones. And making sure that, you know, all the students have the knowledge and the skills and what they're doing, especially in using technology. And that's where I see, really, how the universal design ties into the digital literacy. Because the digital literacy is, we are evaluating and looking at the sources and web tools that we're using. And in doing so, we can figure out what works best or how to help accommodate more students and be more inclusive in what we're doing for all students. And this definitely added more to my understanding of educational technology, which, really, before this class, my educational use of technology was not much more beyond Google Docs and slides and YouTube. So it's been extremely helpful. And like I said, knowing that we have to, like, evaluate and look at things, but not always sharing that with the students on how to do it and making sure that they know how to use their critical thinking skills to do so. And really, the only reason I didn't choose these two was because I saw more of my corporation in the digital divide that I'm in right now. Because even though we are a district that is one-to-one, I know when I was teaching at the junior high that there were still several students who didn't have access to internet at home or adequate access to internet. And so on our virtual days or days we were going to be out for a certain time, I'd always have to have paper copies ready or an alternate assignment. Or they would just be like, hey, I can't get on because the internet's not working or someone else has to be on the internet at this point in time. And so that's why I chose to do the digital divide, because I really did see so much of my corporation in learning about it. But knowing the digital literacy and the universal design for learning, we do do those in the corporation. I just didn't have that many connections. To them, so it was more for that reason that I am discussing them here instead of in the watershed portion.