Blog Journal 6

    Last class, I had my first experience exploring the resource, Diigo. Diigo is a collaborative space to share bookmarks of current resources with your community. A community can be any group of people collaborating for one effort, such as a class, coworkers, fellow researchers, etc. Diigo makes sharing information and resources simplistic and efficient. I really enjoyed the ease of the platform, it was easy to navigate both sharing and looking through resources. I can see myself using Diigo in the future for other researching tasks. Collaborating on research is really helpful because everyone brings their own perspective on life that can be eye opening when working together. 

    I never imagined that I would love blogging. I have always favored English and History over Science and Math. However, I would not call myself a good writer nor a creative writer. I have always wanted to strengthen and challenge my writing skills because I not only really enjoy writing but I find that writing plays a key role in life. Being able to communicate and articulate your feelings through words is a skill that is crucial in life. As students we begin our journey as writers from the minute we begin school. Teachers have us writing out our alphabet over and over until it becomes memory. My goal from blogging was to focus on being honest about what I was learning and experiencing and not writing what I knew my teachers wanted to read. Blogging is a more personal space that gives writers an opportunity to be themselves. I hope that one day, I can make another blog about being a teacher. I have learned from blogging that creating a community is really important for our schools and careers. Communities allow for engagement, interaction and sharing advice that can really encourage and support someone. I love being able to read my classmates blogs to see what they found helpful or difficult.

    Out of all of the Web 2.0 tools the one that I was always interested in was YouTube. Growing up we used YouTube for so much! We watched YouTube videos for fun, we watched instructional videos in class. I still use YouTube at least once a week for either, entertainment, instruction or educational purposes. For teaching, I think that showing YouTube videos can be a great way to educate and entertain students at the same time. However, it should be stated that YouTube is not a replacement for instruction or teachers, YouTube is merely an added resource to the classroom. I found that during the Covid-19 pandemic when schools were completely virtual, YouTube was a great source for my own learning. The beginning of the pandemic occurred when I was a junior in high school, taking 3 AP courses, AP US History, AP English Language and AP Psychology. I needed to be prepared for these upcoming AP tests with little daily instruction from my teachers. Therefore, I turned to YouTube to add another resource that would strengthen my learning and skills that I needed for the tests. As a future teacher, I think that YouTube will continue to be a helpful resource that students respond well to. YouTube is super accessible because it can be watched on any kind of device for completely free. I think it would be even helpful if as a teacher I uploaded my own videos to instruct students and encourage future and/or current educators.