Blog Post #4

     The ELA Standards and Technology Matrix that stood out to me most is for Grade 3, this is due to the fact that I am most interested in elementary education. The overall ELA Standards for Grade 3 includes navigating how to successfully utilize technology to aid in their reading and writing skills. This includes factors like how to use text features like hyperlinks and gathering information from sources on the internet. Other factors include help from educators in guiding students at the grade 3 level to use technology to produce written work, which allows them to practice their keyboarding skills. Based on my current skills, I believe that I can implement these standards due to the fact that the technological skills needed for Grade 3 are surface level. Given the fact that I have been utilizing technology for most of my academic career, I have become familiar with utilizing hyperlinks in order to gather information. Although this standard focuses on incorporating technology into reading and writing skills, the overall goal of these standards is to utilize reading skills such as finding main ideas, word meaning, etc. both on print and digitally. 

    Continuing my interest in elementary education, I looked into the grade 3 CPALMS Educator Toolkit for science. To be more specific, the tool that I would utilize the most in my classroom as a future educator is the instructional resources that come with lesson plans and virtual manipulatives. Within the lesson plans,  there are different topics of science that is available to choose from. These lesson plans include interactive opportunities within the lesson and breaks down the lesson into parts, ranging from what you should know to what you will learn. Within these lesson plans, there are standards that come with the topics presented, allowing teachers to become aware of what standard is being met. This is a tool I would utilize in my classroom as it will aid me during my first few years teaching. Given the fact that it comes with lesson plans already provided, I can either utilize these lesson plans or revise them to meet my objective for a certain topic. I also believe that the interactive features of these lesson plans aid both teachers and students given how the world is currently set up due to the pandemic. Given the fact that technology is heavily present within our lives, the interactive feature allows students to utilize their technology to aid in their academics. 

    As a teacher, it is important to be a proficient internet searcher because you would need to find credible sources that support your lesson plans. Not only would teachers need to search for credible sources for their own personal use, but they would also have to teach students how to find credible sources as well. This is due to the fact that higher grade levels in the subject of reading have to incorporate outside, credible sources into their writing material. Thus, as a teacher, you must be proficient enough in order to easily teach students how to effectively become an internet searcher. Of the internet searching skills that was discussed, I think I will use Google's advanced search the most going forward because my academic career expects me to utilize credible sources in order to support my research and/or argument.