Blog Journal 4 - Nathan Sanborn

 In 6th grade, when I finally got my first phone, it took me a while to download any social media platforms. It wasn't until I made my first friend, and they had asked if I had Snapchat, that I said, "Of course I do," and then I promptly downloaded and made an account. From that point forward, I have always used social media as a means of communication. Whether it be friends or classmates for a group project, that's really all I used it for. Honestly, I didn't even make my first post until my senior year of high school, which was some Instagram meme. Other than my friends, I have not really used social media in a way to promote myself in a promotional manner, and to be frank, if I didn't use it to text my friends, I wouldn't even have social media. However, I do think platforms like this can be useful in advancing a career. You could build connections with your coworkers or maybe present yourself to employers somehow. That would probably be best done through LinkedIn, which seems pretty useful for career-specific things. I will admit, though, Pinterest is by far the best platform. Interaction with others is basically nonexistent, and I get to look at stuff I like. 

I believe my experience with technology in the K-12 system is the same as the rest of my generation. Fortunately, I went to a school that could afford laptops, and we used them for mini projects, test taking, and other learning websites. We had them in this big laptop cart, which I assume any school that could afford laptops had. I suppose K-12 did help me transition into college technology, but I believe it probably helped others more. I had my own computer  from a young age, so I was pretty much always using it. The internet, Google Drive, and even the MS programs sometimes for non-school-related things. If you're not someone like me who is naturally on the computer a lot, I think it would 100% benefit them more. However, for me, I simply already had everything at my disposal and had a lot of practice. It's worth mentioning, though, that in late high school I started using MS Word for writing things in my free time, so that was beneficial since I first used MS Word in school. The most important part, though, of what I believe the K-12 system does, is getting you used to a laptop. I despise using laptops, and I'm very slow on them. I have a two-monitor setup, which is very nice, and I've always done work like that, so whenever I do homework on my laptop, it takes me much longer to do things. Everyone else I see is pretty efficient with theirs, so I think the K-12 system prepared people well in that regard. It's more of a me issue, though; whenever I got assigned an assignment at school that wasn't paper, I would always ignore it until I got home to do it on my PC. I held myself back a lot. 

I'm an absolutely massive fan of things such as Google Docs, Slides, or Drive. I love how easy it is to invite people and collaborate on things. Google Drive is probably the favorite. When I went to the Amazon Jungle, everyone took pictures, so we have a shared Google Drive of all the pictures. I would like to integrate those three software programs, as I believe they are very intuitive, making it easy to connect and work with others. Google Docs could be good because I could have an assignment made, assign it, and then multiple people could easily contribute. If I print out a paper for a group to use, only one person can write on it at once. For a presentation, it's easy to assign something and have group projects be made. And for Google Drive, I think having a drive for each class and having assignments where they have to update it could be fun. All of those come from the idea that a classroom should be connected and collaborative, which I believe fosters learning most efficiently. I actually do have an assignment related to all of these. Ideally it's four people in a group, and each is given four sources, three being real and one being fake. Each group makes a project around those four sources, citing info in Google Docs, making a presentation out of it, and then uploading it to the drive. Then each group is tasked with looking at other groups' projects and trying to track the false source. I think it's a fun way to force them to focus on key details of some factual information, talk with others, and then also learn how to find accurate sources.