Journal #7

      Twitter is extremely useful for communicating with my classmates. I haven't had any issues with Twitter throughout this experience so far, which is great. I have learned that there are informational Twitter Chats where people discuss various topics and there are whole conversations that occur between professionals. For example, there is a Twitter Chat that we had to use this week in our online class called the AECT Twitter Conference Backchannel. Things like this on Twitter allow professionals to communicate with people around the world and spread new ideas and concepts. This kind of communication that is available through Twitter is helping to benefit the increased spread of knowledge and the increased number of new ideas that are occurring in different fields. These are examples of the benefits of using Twitter.

      The Web Design assignment taught me how to add a calendar to a website, which I didn't know how to do beforehand. I also learned what C.R.A.P. Design Principles are and how to implement them on my website. For example, part of C.R.A.P. Design Principles is having easy to read fonts and colors on your page without too much background imagery to distract which is clearly demonstrated throughout my website and in the screenshot below. Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of the website Weebly to create it. My biggest problem with it was that the format was very structured so it was difficult to make it unique or individualized for "my class." I didn't like how had limited options for what texts were what fonts/sizes. For example, all paragraph texts had to be the same font/size, which was annoying at times because there were instances where I wanted one part of the paragraph to be different to showcase importance, and instead, I had to change the color or capitalize the entire word. It still got the message across, I just had a different way in mind of how to do it that I couldn't do with this website. I did like how easy it was to create new pages and link things using Weebly though. Adding the calendar was much easier than I thought it would be too. I expected it to be really difficult to add a calendar since I had never done it before, but it was very easy to do, especially once I looked up the instructions for it. I could improve it next time by adding more information and maybe adding a page specifically for students and parents to ask questions. I will use all of these skills and similar websites in my career as a teacher to structure a website for my students to have all of our homework, assignments, and information in. Below is a screenshot of the Calendar page of my Web Design Assignment.

      Assistive and adaptive technologies are used to help students with special needs in classrooms. There are many different kinds of assistive and adaptive technologies for different needs. Essentially, assistive and adaptive technologies are used to help students who need additional help. For example, if someone has a visual impairment, there are a few options. One is that they can use a program that magnifies the screen so it's easier to read and if there is a page that can't be magnified, it will read it to them. There are also programs that will read everything to students if they are severely visually impaired or blind but need to access a computer or some other technology. For people who have a limited range of motion or limited mobility, there are programs that account for that and help students to navigate technology with that in mind. I haven't used these technologies and I don't think I know anyone who has, but they are extremely beneficial to the people who use it. I think there are a few challenges that could arise with adaptive or assistive technologies in classrooms. I think the biggest challenge would be finding the funding for these and making sure every student who needs help has access to it. This is especially true for low-income schools where they might not have the funds to afford these kinds of technologies or programs to help their students. Another challenge would be if the function of the technology is audio-based or visually different, it could potentially distract the other students in the class who struggle with focusing or for students who need to pay attention to the lesson. I think those are the two main challenges that could occur using adaptive technologies in a classroom. However, there are definitely many more benefits to these technologies so their benefits clearly outweigh the challenges making it worthwhile to implement these in every classroom that needs it.