Journal 4: February 3rd, 2022

    ELA Standards and Technology Matrices

    When viewing the ELA Standards and Technology Matrices, one of the standards for grades 11-12 is the ability to use technology or the internet to create and revise writing projects alone or with others. I feel like I currently have an OK grasp of this standard, seeing as I have been blogging for a few weeks now. I also am familiar with word processing software such as Google Docs and Microsoft Word, which are listed as tools that would allow someone to carry out the standard. I believe as this course continues, I will be able to have a greater sense of mastery in this sense, and thus be able to implement it in my classroom one day. 

CPALMS Educator Toolkit

    After exploring the CPALMS Educator Toolkit for high school English, I found a resource titled "Unconquered: Exploring Poetry," in which students read two poems and practice finding themes and writing poetry summaries. I would use this resource because it not only allows students to read works of literature, but also to interact with it and interpret it, and then be able to put their thoughts down on paper. The themes of the poems could also lead to valuable conversations about facing adversity and having personal strength, which has always been one of my favorite elements of discussing literature. The resource also says it only takes around 50 minutes, which would fill up most of the class time in an average high school block or period. Overall, this resource would be helpful to my class because it fulfills multiple skills in an English class: reading and analyzing poetry, and writing about it. 

    

Internet Searching

    As an educator, knowing how to be proficient in internet searching is a necessary skill, especially with how heavily the internet is used in classrooms now. It is also very important as a teacher to know how to filter the information you find online, especially if you are presenting it to a class. You don't want to find a resource online that seems great, only to find that it's incredibly biased or inaccurate. There are also so many resources online that can benefit teachers, so being able to find those and make use of them can make your job much easier. 

    Out of the internet searching skills we learned this week, I think I will start using the "minus" feature on Google to filter out results I don't want. I didn't know this was something you could do, and it seems incredibly helpful when searching something that has multiple meanings or is very broad. Something we didn't talk about that I have used before is the reverse image search feature on Google. It helps greatly when you find a picture, but want to know where it came from originally or want to see more photos of the same thing and cannot find the name or correct keywords to do so. I've used it a few times when I see a random image on Instagram or TikTok and want to find out where it came from!