Blog #7: Twitter, Web Design, and adaptive tech

Hey everybody,

Twitter is something else. I never had one before this class because I did not what I would do with it because I was just use to Instagram. But when I had to make one for this course, I made sure to make one for my general academic self and not just for this course. After following and using twitter for a little bit I realized that is a great way to communicate fast and to a wide audience.  For example, as I mentioned in previous blog post, the use of twitter by historians (by using #twitterstorians) was so immense that it straight up shocked me. It was probably because I never had an image of a historian or professor using twitter as a social media platform bur it seems to be their favorite. To be honest though, I am not an active twitter user when it comes to making original posts, i mostly just like or retweet things that I like or find interesting. I have to challenge myself to be a more active twitter user with the community in order to develop my PLN and expertise in Twitter. 

For my Web Design assignment, I wanted to create a website I wished my teacher made when I was taking my IB HL History of the Americas in my senior year of high school. The year I took the class, it was his first year teaching it and all the rules/lessons had been update (which we didn't find out till last minute and were scrambling to get prepared!) therefore I wanted to create a website that I would use if I was in his shoes. I overall enjoyed the experience in making the website with the help of education Weebly. I found it easy to organize and work on it through Weebly's interface, the only hiccup occurred when I tried to put background pictures in the website because it did not always allowed me to move it the way I wanted it to. If I were to do it again, which is likely to happen, I wanted to make my website more interactive with links or effects but I would have probably had to have payed for those extra things.  

Here is a link to my website: http://larraldeibhistory.weebly.com/

I was very interested in learning about A.T this week and getting to see the videos of the different students using different technology to help them. This topic is also personal to me because I do have dyslexia and dysgraphia but never had the opportunity to use A.T in my schools. To be fair, I do not know what the tech was like when I was in elementary school (in the early 2000s) because the videos I saw of the A.T were filmed in 2014. I was particularly interested in the word prediction software because I wished I had something like that in elementary or middle school (or even now when I thnik about it) cause it would have help immensely. But this could also connect to the challenges that may arise with A.T, the disticts budget can make it harder for schools to buy tech for their students that would help one. Also, as a teacher how would you make sure the work is balance for the student who uses A.T and for those who do not. I think both groups should be in the same class and not excluded from each other but that means that the teacher has to find a way to make it work for all their students.