Ms. Smith Blog

 I spent a little time looking through the class pages for Chiles High School. Not all teachers had pages, and the ones that did have pages often included minimal information. I came to expect nothing more than an email link and a brief overview of a teacher's educational past--certifications and college education. Some teachers had a more involved page, with personal background information, pictures, mission statements, and a course overview. The best example was Mrs. Hilary Parson's  teacher page. As a teacher, I see myself using Canvas. This wasn't a tool that teachers used in my K-12 education, but it has crept into public schools as an infrastructure. It allows teachers to easily distribute information, make notifications for assignments and class events, and have students submit work remotely. I don't see myself having an in-depth website for my class beyond that, and I especially don't see myself including personal information for all to see--for myself, I th...

 When I was younger, I avoided social media like the plague. I identified as a "not-like-other-girls" "cool girl" with no interest in the shallow frivolities of Instagram. My principled stand was impressive to no one. I watched--but didn't upload--to YouTube, and kept up with content creators by using Twitter (RIP). I was a consumer, not a contributor, and you'd be hard-pressed to find any record of me online beyond my voting records. Only now, as a nostalgic 20-something, do I have the desire to keep up with my old high school buddies--just in time for them to decide that social media is toxic. C'est la vie. Now I have Instagram because of this class, and I use Reddit to keep track of other teachers and wannabes. Social media is great for a lot of the same reasons that it's terrible--it allows you to gauge the unfiltered thoughts of other people, where strangers vent and whine and often say unkind things to each other. It also allows you to understa...

 As a teacher, copyright law may seem unimportant or limiting in a classroom setting, but it's important to set an example of academic honesty to the students. I see myself making my own teaching materials, especially in presenting PowerPoints, as this skirts the issue of fair use while also allowing me to personalize and jazz up class. I have fond memories from K-12 of teachers using untraditional methods to capture student interest, like using relevant songs, memes, or in-jokes during class. These helped all of us memorize material and kept us engaged, and they stood in contrast to premade presentations, which were usually a bit boring. It was interesting to learn that there's a face-to-face schooling exception to copyright. Academic dishonesty is worrisome to me. I grew up before AI was widely used by students, so I feel a bit unprepared to catch that form of cheating when it occurs. In community college, I had one teacher who responded to this problem by only holding in-per...

" Cal Poly classroom " by  mellen_petrich  is licensed under  CC BY-SA 2.0 .  In my k-12 education, using Office products was usually my best option. Early on, Word was much less expensive and much more common than other word processing software, so I used it as an elementary schooler, taking advantage of my dad's subscription. In middle school, I had to take a class in computers and technology that required a certification in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I passed the class fine, but found a lot of it to be overcomplicated and unnecessary for where I was in education at the time. For most of high school, I used Google Docs and other Google products because they were free and could be easily shared and accessed from different computers. It wasn't until I was a college student using Canvas that I returned to using Office products, including Word--my classes required me to submit everything as a Word document. Early in the transition, I wrote and edited my papers on Goo...

My study buddy, Ziggy I'm not great with technology. I've always favored old-fashioned handwritten notes, and I pay extra to have physical topics of my textbooks. In general, I'm hoping to become more comfortable with tech, especially AI, which came up after I finished high school and honestly kinda scares me. I'm also excited to learn more about techniques in education as I see myself likely becoming a teacher following graduation. I was an SAT and math tutor in high school. I used minimal tech. Likewise, my underfunded public school offered limited options for technology--basically bottom-rung laptops with an Internet firewall so high that practically only Wikipedia was available. I became certified in Microsoft Office and used it throughout my education for presentations and papers. I had some dual-enrollment classes and learned how to use Canvas. I developed my research abilities from home. My friends at the time were aspiring engineers who used their free time to b...