Blog Post: The popular Apps in school

Nowadays, everything become very efficient and convenient! Even in school. People use to go school with bunch of textbooks, notebooks, and pencils etc. Now people would just bring an iPad, basically tablet or electronic device but how does that help teachers and students while teaching and learning? Well there are many apps that are educational and are perfect for school (teachers and students). Of course, Apps are making everything easier. Instead of writing a report by hand, we could simply just go Google drive and make presentation online and just share with the teacher's email, it is that easy and quick. Sometimes teachers wouldn't have enough time to finish their teachings and it might be the reason that, they had to prepared a lot before the teaching day by making up speeches, notes and probably a "real-life" example of something. So on the day of teaching he/she would have to present to the class, and just by writing down the notes on the board takes about 5 minutes. But if the teacher used apps such as Google presentation, all they have to do on the day of teaching is just talking, students can get the notes from teacher by sharing the documents to students so that the student can focus on listening to the teacher instead of being busy taking down the notes. And there are actually 10 apps that are really common and is a great tool for teachers to use which are: Google Apps, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, EverNote, Dropbox, ClassJojo, Edmodo, WordPress *blogging software*, and Socrative. In here I will be talking about the ones that I've seen it almost with all the teachers and think it is very useful and awesome. ;) 

1. Google Apps! 

This is the most famous apps of all! not only on education but also search tools from Google is large and convenient. The apps in Google Apps that teachers would use the most would probably be Google documents. In Google documents, teachers can share students his or her notes just by clicking "share" and enter the student's email address. Isn't that fast? If there's a group work, teachers always tell students to use Google document so that we can do the presentation or work together at one time, and even though we don't meet each other during the weekends, we could still go online and do the work together! That's why it is so famous for teacher's tool ! In this point, student won't have any excuse like "my paper is gone", "my partner is not around" etc. 

2. Twitter!

This app are also available for sharing things! Just like my teacher Mr.Pete, he always shared students articles about the latest interesting things about technology so that even though we don't know how to search or what to search about the latest technology, we can just go there and find articles that he shared with us!!

3. YouTube!

In my opinion, this is the most awesome app! I guessed it's also awesome for teachers! Because if you don't know anything, yes you might just Google it but it wouldn't be easy for some people that are visual learners. For education, especially for math! The hardest subject ever, when I don't understand some topics during weekends, and I can either ask teacher for help by Emailing them or simply just go YouTube and search for tutorials! There are A LOT of useful videos in YouTube that gave us a better understanding of anything. Even teachers can learn from videos! Sometimes they just show you step by step, sometimes they speak to you like they're teaching us. So for teachers that thought of students when they're lack of understanding of some topic in class, they can also send some useful, and helpful videos to students for them to get a better understanding. 

4. Dropbox!

Dropbox is a really convenient app for sharing "files". And it is really cool that we can share big files to each other. Before if teacher want to send those big files to students, they might need USB or Email (but email have limitations). For drop box, students and teachers and share big files "online"! if you don't want to download the app. If you downloaded you can see the files keep on updating on the desktop, isn't that just so convenient? We don't even have to sign in etc... we can just open the folder called "dropbox" on our desktop and the files would be updated automatically when there's new stuff being added in. 

Major Concetps:

There are apps that are really useful when it comes to education! They all became teacher's favorite apps when it comes to teaching. Apps like YouTube, Google etc are really convenient in good the way of students 'and teachers' teachers and learning. Apps are mostly "online", and online are teacher's "favorite". It is not just convenient, it also saves a lot and I mean A LOT of time! 

Advantage and Disadvantages:

The advantage of apps that teacher uses with students is that it really saves a lot of time. Before if we want to do research we might have to go library and get books, but now internet has "everything". If teachers saw something that is helpful to students, they would share with students too! and when I say sharing, it is simply just send them the link or share them the link by one click. Quick, and easy. 

Since it is online, when teachers want to share us something, we can always go back and check the things they shared with us, we don't need to go ask them again. 

The disadvantage would be that, if there's no "INTERNET"... or the internet shuts down somehow, students wouldn't be able to access to teacher's blog and if we tell teacher that we couldn't access to internet, they would be like : "sorry but is your problem". probably for some students, the might lie to teacher and take advantage of " cannot access to internet ". But for some people that really cannot access to internet will then have a big problem. -__-"

Questions:

I wonder what will happen to people now without these technology/apps/internet access...will people go back to the time when we still do homework by writing etc...?

Citation:

"The 10 Most Popular Teacher Tools Being Used This Year." Edudemic. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

Chapter 5 Thought Questions

Do you have a computer in your home as you were growing up? If so, how did it influence your education to this point? If not, how did the lack of a home computer influence your education to this point?

- Yes, I do have a computer when I were growing up. In my opinion, it has a good influence in my education because when I was young, I used to play typing English vocabulary game a lot, and this made me knows how to use keyboard and know how to place properly (since the first rule of the game is to know how to place the keyboard properly). As days goes by, I became more accurate while typing! And not just only that, even the vocabularies in the game helped me know many easy English vocabularies! and that is actually a good influence for education in a point. Even now! for education, computer made everything way easier than what it used to be. For example, if I don't understand what teacher said in class, I can always "Google" it using computer. 

The digital divide puts those who have access to technology on one side and those who do not on the other side. Do you feel that it is the right of everyone to have access to technology?

-Its right for people to access to technology but is not good to separate those who have access to technology and those who don't. For accessing to technology and digital divide, is just up to the user whether they'd like to use computer or not, if they like it then they should go ahead and access to the technology. But it would't be good if they separate people hat have access to technology and those who don't have because it doesn't mean that if I don't have a computer or a smart device, I don't want to use them. It more like, they can't and they don't know how to use, so instead of being happy to see the device they might feel like "oh, I don't know to use so forget about it". So now people that have the access to technology can go help and teach them how to use so they can access and feel interested to technology.

It will cost a great deal of money to erase the digital divide. Who do you think should be responsible for paying cost?

-For me I think that the government should pay for it. Because the cause of "digital divide" is not from us, is not us who made those people separate into 2 sides. And since I think that government are the ones who work for the country to make a country better, they should be responsible for all these. For example, nowadays there are many, almost every school has computers, TVs, etc but there are still many poor people that goes the schools that doesn't provide them all these. And so, the government now can provide some computers to those poor people that can't go to a school that has computers! so It will be equal. 

Having access to technology is not enough; people must be taught to use the technology they have. How would you define computer literacy for each of the following groups of people?

a. High school students in an industrialized country:
-Since they are students in an industrialized country, they have a clear idea of how to use computer because everyone is using it, and it is just very common for high school students to use computers, iPads and those other electronic devices in school. Textbook might even all be E-Copies, and homework are mostly online.  And I believe, many of them do have "research paper" as their homework during high school time, and so they actually uses computer to do online research about their topic.

b. Kindergarten teachers in an industrialized country:
-Teachers teach in kindergarten mostly teaches basic things, and so they might not touch computers that much since they uses something more like big books big pictures, activities, games etc. So the teachers might not really use it a lot everyday  which is different from what those teachers in high-school did. But if they really have a lesson about computer, the teachers might just introduce the really basic component and function of outputs of computer such as (keyboard, mouse, etc).

c. College graduates in an industrialized country:
-College people had been through both kindergarten and high school, so they actually have the best and the most clear computer literacy! Probably they learned about engineering during college, so when they graduate, they would have to touch computer all day everyday and it would actually become the thing that they "have to" use everyday in their life. And not even engineers, even those people who work for selling things online, they would have to be good at organizing a website to make it look attractive to the customers so that they can earn money. So in this stage, it would be the most clear time of their life of using computer.

d. Students in sub-Saharan Africa:
-Just by looking at the place, "sub-Saharan Africa" and compare to "industrialized place" we can say that, the students here might not get to have personal computers, probably some but it might be really less but even though they have, they might not use it like what the students lived in industrialized place. Their level might be the same as those kindergarten students that lived in industrialized place.

e. College graduates in sub-Saharan Africa:
-College graduates might have better computer leniency than the students, but, since their work in the future might not be something like engineer, but instead they might work at their home etc. So they might know about the computers but not as easy as the college graduates in industrialized country and not as "deep" as them either.

f. Government officials in the Andes:
-Since they are government officials, they should at least know some basic things about computer but they're in Andes, where there are mountains etc, they might not use computer a lots but like I just mentioned, they are government who work for their country, so they might at least have a standard level of computer using in order to connect and keep in touch of other countries. 

Code of Ethics: Case 4 - Unauthorized Access

In case 4 it is talking about hacking account. An instructor had allotted a fixed time for each student to access the computer to finish their project. And one of the student that ever work at a computer center hasn't done his/her project yet, so he/she hacked into the instructor's account and adjust the time to be longer in order to finish the project. 

According to this case, the code of ethics is violated because in the ACM code it says that everyone has to be:

     - Be honest and truth-worthy.

     - Be fair and take action not to discriminate.

     - Respect privacy of others.

And in this case, the student is not being honest because without telling the instructor, she made a change to the time and this wouldn't be fair to those other students that are not done with their project. Thea action that she's hacking the instructor's account is considered not being respectful to the privacy of others. 

According to the case, here are the consequences:

• By not being honest, the instructor might not let student work on project on their own with the computer anymore since the student are un-trust-able, probably she/he would stayed next to the student next time.

• By not being fair and finished the project her/himself because of hacking the account and adjust the time, the other students might seek you as a cheater and instructor might have bad impression of you and perhaps, yourself and your grades might get effected too. 

• By not respecting the privacy of other is very bad and dangerous. In this case is just between instructor and student, so the instructor might give you detention or more works, less grades or even contact your parents etc. But if you are in the real world and you don't respect other people's privacy, they can actually sue you and put you into the jail, so is very important to respect other peoples privacy. 

Instead of being and acting like this, they should be honest and respect to other people's privacy (just like what they mentioned in ACM). Also they should be responsibility in making decision so they wont harm the others. By doing these the result will be --> Because you think carefully, and decided not to do it, this won't harm anyone even yourself. But if you decided to hack the account, then you should be responsibility of what you've done, and don't blame the others.


-  Access computing and communication resources only when authorized do so.
-  Avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or employment by false or malicious action.