Blog Post #2

     My experiences with Word started fairly recently- even though I had both Google Docs and Microsoft Word available to me throughout grade school, I always used Google Docs, since my school provided me with a separate google account for schoolwork instead of using my personal account. It was only in the later years of high school and starting college that I started to use Word primarily over Docs. Though I now prefer Word's interface and extra options to deliver a more finely formatted and detailed product, whenever I have to work on a document with a team, I always use Google Docs, since the cloud storage and online editing benefits multiple people working at once. If not for the fact that FSU provided me with a Microsoft account (just like my grade school did), I would likely still use Docs for individual projects as well.

    Of the several ITSE Standards for Educators, the one I value most is the role of Collaborator. I've always felt that in my own experiences as a student, the teachers who worked alongside me, who treated me as a colleague, always managed to draw out more impressive results from me than the teachers who talked down to me and didn't treat me as an equal. I initially assumed that the Collaborator standard only had to do with treating students as adults, though after my readings, I've come to realize that it also involves a degree of cultural competency. This allows an educator to connect with students in a more effective and respectful manner, which is what I value in educators.

Yamaha DME3000 Digital Mixing Engine Teardown
by Dave Jones under  CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

    Regarding the title of "Digital Native" being granted to Gen Z, I think it's a more than accurate assessment of our generation's place in the technological revolution of the past couple decades. The term digital native is used to refer to people born and raised at a time where modern technologies like the Internet or smartphones were already present, and thus were raised with knowledge on these technologies, as opposed to older generations or "digital immigrants", who had to learn and adapt to the rise of new technologies that were developed at a later point in their lives. The divide between digital natives and immigrants is crystal clear- think about any time where a teacher or professor has struggled to project a slideshow, or share their screens on a Zoom call, while many of their students could achieve these actions with ease. This divide has led to a disruptive learning environment, where teachers who are unfamiliar with these technologies cannot lead an effective class while grappling with their tech issues. No doubt, this divide will persist even among my own generation and the next, as they are raised with new technologies that I won't be very familiar with.