Digital Literacy: I have been keeping track of the technology that I use over the course of a week. The technology that I use are my cell phone (a touch screen, but not a fancy phone), my computer (at home and at one of my jobs), and my television. I'm only counting the technology that uses a screen of sorts. I use my phone for texting and calling. I use my personal laptop for homework and music from youtube. I use my work computer for work and occasionally homework. I use the television for unwinding at the end of the day. I get online for roughly an hour a day on weekdays and usually not at all on the weekends. That is, unless I count the hours that I let Pandora play in the background. Then I will up it by about 10 hours a week. I would say that I am "glued" to a screen for roughly 5 hours a day, that is if I average all of my weekdays by all of the screens that I use. I exchange texts with my English major friends and my husband. I usually have to call my sister a few times a week because she is my boss and I text 2 of my other siblings because we rent from them.

The only online texts that I read are assignments from teachers or the occasional research on a web search. I suppose Facebook could count as an online text. However, I really hate reading from a computer screen, so I usually print out whatever I need to read. So I get on, print, and get off as fast as I can. I used to spend more time in front of a screen in previous years. I used to have more computer based homework and I used to have more time. This semester is more hectic than most.

To align my teaching with the digital age, I will be available to my students via email and a classroom blog. To be more earth friendly I will make additional readings available online, either through the classroom blog or through whatever system my school is using. I will make their rubrics, syllabus, and grades available online as well and make sure that parents have access as well. I do not see myself using digital as the primary resource for anything in my classroom, however. Technology is touchy and not all students or parents have it available to them. I will make it an option for those who like to go that route.

One nice use of technology is primary source documents that I can ask my students to utilize. There are excellent websites where the original and oldest copies of documents are posted as a jpeg. The only time I will ask students to interact with each other will be google docs to complete group work assignments. I will adjust as technology advances of course, but I firmly believe that students already are too proficient in using technology to interact. I believe that students need more practice interacting face to face and learning people skills.

Technologies that I intend to use in my instruction are various computers to teach them how to write papers, use google docs, and blogs, etc. I will also use web sites to gain access to more thorough information or the occasional movie clip or primary source document. If my students are unfamiliar with any technology I will use differentiated instruction or have them partner up with peer tutors.