Anna Rosak

      Assistive technology is an important tool that enables students with disabilities to participate more fully in the education setting and increases their opportunities in learning, social interaction, and communication in the classroom (Parent Center Hub, 2022). Many of the technologies that we use in our classrooms already have accessibility features that make them assistive and beneficial for our students with disabilities. It is important that teachers learn about those accessibility features so they can implement them in their classroom when they see fit depending on their student population and what will work best for their students' disabilities.       As there can be many features and many technologies that a teacher uses, it is best to start with the technologies that a teacher already uses in their classroom and that their school provides for them, that way they are not overwhelmed with information right away. Then it is good to...

     The use of video conferencing for education was made most popular during the COVID-19 pandemic when schools were shut down and the only option for teaching and learning was through the use of technology and video conferencing. Just like with all technology, there are both advantages and disadvantages to using video conferencing for education and there needs to be careful consideration when deciding whether or not to use it in your classroom or teaching.      One advantage of video conferencing is the ability to meet with people all around the world. In the music classroom you can video conference with musicians, composers, and experts from anywhere in the world to speak to your class and they can learn straight from the source. Getting people like that to come directly to your school could be almost impossible because of travel, expenses, and time, but with video conferencing it is cheap and easy to meet. This is also helpful for students to devel...

     Google Maps and Google Earth are two Google tools that are available for teachers to utilize in their classrooms and have many features that make them desirable for classroom use. Google Maps is a web service that that provides road maps and information about geographical regions and sites worldwide (Zola, 2022). The most used feature of Google Maps is for navigating and finding the shortest and most convenient routes to a desired destination (Lande, 2019). Within Google Maps you can measure distances, download offline maps, drop pins in certain locations, save locations to lists and label them, and access a timeline of all places and routes the user has been to. Google Earth is a geomapping and tagging program that creates an interactive map of the Earth (Davis, 2019). Within Google Earth you can explore any place in the world including cities and landscapes, which you can then save into categories.           Google Maps is, at first gl...

      Digital communication is a wonderful tool in that we can use it to stay connected with family and friends that are not physically near to us. It helps us to keep our relationships strong and growing with other people, and to stay updated on what is happening in their lives. Unfortunately, digital communication can be a weakness in a society when we only use that for our communication. If we neglect real face-to-face relationships then digital communication is not doing us any services. We should be building relationships with people in person and then use digital communication as a way to stay connected with those people when we cannot be physically with them. This is an example of what John did. He made relationships with other Christians and churches, and then kept in contact with them in letters. Human beings were created with the need for relationships, for physical and face-to-face connections with other people. We were not created to stay at home along talking...

      Teachers have always been networking, but with onset of new technologies, it has changed what networking looks like. Building a PLN is not just about building relationships with other teachers, but is about you learning new skills and ideas to help further your relationship with your students. Paul might not have deeply known every person at each church he interacted with, but the letters, support, resources, and advice he gave to those churches helped them develop their relationships within the church more deeply. While the relationships we build online may not seem to be as significant as ones that we build in person, they are important as they teach us a lot about what is out there in the world of education. We learn from teachers in other states or countries, environments like rural or urban, school types like private or public, and situations like with coworkers or administrators.     Since we as Christians are called to do all things t...