Blog Journal 2

            My personal use of Microsoft Office products is quite extensive. In middle school I was creating animated short films using animation features in Microsoft PowerPoint. Drawing sprites and giving them movements and readable dialogue and sound effects. This was a project to help me learn the features of PowerPoint. I have also given many presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint throughout my high school and college career. I also heavily used Microsoft Excel in a couple of past jobs I have held. I have used it for tasks as simple as creating tracking logs and I have used it for tasks as complex as writing queries in SQL. I have used Microsoft Word more than I could begin to explain and have become quite familiar with its features. Microsoft Word is my preferred word processor because of my familiarity with it. I have years more of experience with Microsoft Word than any other word processor, although I am quite familiar with Google Docs because of its likeness to MS Word.

I believe the most important standard of the ISTE Standards for Educators is leadership. Leadership is important for several reasons. First, in order for a teacher to effectively teach a classroom they must be a leader. It is the responsibility of the teacher to lead the students down the path that will be most beneficial for the student. It is also important because teachers are the first model of a leader for a child. Teachers set the example of how to lead, which is an indirect lesson that students receive when in school. Another reason it is important is because we must be teaching students to grow into leaders. A future without leaders is a mess.

I am personally fond of the term digital native because it really puts into perspective the comfort level of young people versus the comfort level of older generations when it comes to technology. The things we grow up around are what we are most comfortable with. This can already be seen in my generation… when newer technology comes out that is better than its predecessor, we often complain and like it to be the way it was before. Examples like Apple deleting the headphone jack from iPhones or moving all USB ports to USB C. We do not like change, especially when it costs us money. Younger generations who will grow up not knowing what a headphone jack will never miss the inferior tech and will probably fail to understand why people older than them miss it. Someone who is native to technology is much more accepting than someone who is a digital immigrant.

"digital natives" by Cristóbal Cobo Romaní 
licensed with CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license,
visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/