Blog #4

     For standard 6, Human-Computer interactions and artificial intelligence, I would explain this standard to 6th graders as learning when computers are helpful and when they are hurtful. This standard focuses on identifying when computers make tasks easier, but I think it is important to also stress the other side of this, when computers make tasks harder. An example of when tasks are made easier with computers is studying. There are countless study tools and resources online that are easy to access when a teacher cannot help you. However, this becomes harmful when students use tools meant for studying to cheat or do assignments for them. For example, there are several websites designed to do math problems for you to check your work with, and then provide you with a detailed set of steps and explanations, but many students use these websites instead to complete assignments for themselves without actually doing the work. I do feel prepared to implement this standard with my current skill set because it mostly involves educating students on the resources available to them and how these resources should be used and not abused.

    The standard, "Apply mathematics to real-world contexts" is extremely important to understanding math concepts, as well as taking something away from the lessons in order to help make functioning members of society. One of the resources listed for this standard includes a lesson plan that deals with real life situations with cookies that are meant to provoke critical thinking. I think this lesson plan is very helpful because even if you did not use the lesson plan exactly, you could take the concepts from it to make your own. For example, dealing with cookies in the real world example is a way to keep the students engaged, because most students will like cookies. So if I were to alter this lesson plan, I would also try and use a similarly conceptualized real world thing, like cake, rather than plates or something less interesting. There are also hundreds of courses listed in the resources for this standard, to help you understand the concept yourself and the best ways to go about teaching it in this specific grade level.

    It is important to be a proficient searcher so that you find the most accurate results for what you are looking for in an efficient manner. Proficient internet searching is especially important for teachers, because searching proficiently can be really helpful for finding specific information related to lessons, or for finding the most helpful resources. I think I will use the advanced search skills the most moving forward. I am semi familiar with advanced searches form making searches on FSU's library website, but I was not aware these same principles could be applied to google searches, so knowing that will be extremely helpful for my searches in the future.Specifically the advanced tool feature to exclude related words from the search will be very helpful to me, because oftentimes when searching, I will get several results that are not related to what I need, and I did not know how to exclude those until now.