3 Sometimes it is not the design but the user

     It is hard for me to fairly evaluate a website. This is not necessarily because of the design of the website but the fact that i struggle with navigating websites. Lets take what someone would consider a simple website by design http://www.fsu.edu/. I was given explicit instructions on how to navigate this page yet I still found it difficult. I personally am I  a visual learner so for me having the most detailed instructions on a very simple to navigate site does not do much. Other aspects of the website I can critique would be whether it is credibly or not. When looking at websites I often am not on them to explore them but to get information for research papers. A website must have certain features for me to consider it credible enough to get background information off of it. I look to see if it has an author, what the ending of the URL is and when it was last accessed. These are all small things to look for that could save a lot of time in the long run because the source could always turn out to be not very good.
     As we get further into this class I begin to realize how much of a need technology really is in education. After spending time in my mothers classroom I believe I would like to to use Skype with my class. I took an education class last year and we learned about how classrooms all over the world were connecting with one another via Skype. The classes would talk to each other and discuss the differences between their educations. Along with that I would also use Classdojo. I think Classdojo is a beneficial way to promote good behavior. Many of the classes I have been in use it and the kids get to the point where they are in competition with one another and try and see who can be on the extremely best behavior and get more points. The age range I am looking at teaching is kindergarten. With this age group I feel like it would be hard to have the students use glogster or a type of social media due to their age. Maybe as a class we could have a glogster or twitter so that their families could see what the class was up to.
     New skills I learned from the Newsletter Design Assignment were all the different ways you could format it. I had already had some of the basic knowledge of how to use Word but the times when I would just play around with word art, shading, and shapes was a long time ago. This assignment was kind of relaxing because it allowed you to be creative but then at the same time it was a pain. I kept running into problems with the columns. They would work and everything would be good then next thing you know all of my pictures are off of the paper and there is writing where there should not be. I feel like my Newsletter is not exactly how I wanted it to be because of formatting issues with word.