Digital Blog Post #A - Chapter 1

While reading chapter one, something that caught my eye right off the bat was "iGeneration". By iGeneration according to our book is students between the ages 8 to 18 years old have grown up using computers, Internet, and other digital media on a daily basis, whether it's at school or at home. According to research made 95% of 12 to 17-year-olds are online and 80% of them are use sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (Lenhart, Madden, Smith, Purcell, Zickuhr, and Rainie, 2011). Since there is such a high percentage of kids using technology, I think it is only right that it'd be incorporated in classrooms as well. As the years go by technology just takes bigger a bigger impact on everyone, so might as well learn all the wonders it brings.

The second thing that caught my attention was that teachers have their own technology-based library! How cool is that? The technology-based library is an internet-accessible computer with social bookmarking tools that gives teachers a vast collection of curriculum and instructional resources. I thought this was so amazing because I've never heard about this until now that I am reading about it. Teachers won't have to spend HOURS researching things from Google (where everything isn't accurate) or books that you have to choose from they can just go online and it will most likely be there with just a few steps rather than hundreds of them.

Lastly, I thought that having your digital identity is great. Digital identity as defined in the book refers to your technology talents and competencies. I liked a quote I saw as I was reading " Every day brings a feeling of reinventing ourselves."(Serinus, 2012, p.17) I couldn't agree more, every day, every moment of our lives we learn something new. Having a digital identity allows you to build a multimedia resume, you learn new resources and most importantly modeling technology for students.

In conclusion, technology will always be a part of our lives, even more for 21st-century teachers. Some teachers or parents might be against it, but we're surrounded with technology everywhere we go. I know the basic things about technology, more social media than anything, but I am willingly open to learning new techniques that will better help me in my career.

Resources:
Textbook - Maloy, R., O'Loughlin, R., Edwards, S., & Woolf, B. (2013). Transforming Learning with New Technologies. 2nd edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZokqjjIy77Y