Desktop Diaries

Hello Readers! I hope you all are staying safe and healthy during this time. I want to take time to discuss the many changes and adjustments having to be made in the midst of the COVID 19 pandemic, and also dive into how this is affecting teachers and all those who are now working remotely.  💬💻Working From Home 💻💬 As I have mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I am very grateful to be able to keep busy and work from home during this time. I am an Orientation Leader for my University, in addition, I have also been elected as the Vice President of the Residence Hall Association (RHA). That being said, my participation in these organizations include attending meetings and conducting what is usually an 8 hour orientation day on campus to a virtual setting. Of course, this goes without having to be said, but online classes required me to spend a lot of time staring at my computer screen as well.  My Observations     I have noticed that after reading severa...

Hello Readers! As you may already be able to tell by the Apple- covered backgrounds of my blog and my choice of blog topics, this is a teacher- related blog. I have used the Apple. a widely known symbol to represent teaching, in a variety of different places on this website. This has got me thinking, though, Where did the whole Teacher- Apple thing come from? I have associated the Apple with teaching for as long as I can remember, and have even seen it played out on cartoons and TV shows where a student gifts a teacher an apple and they keep it on their desk. When did Apples start being associated with teaching? My guess: Before I look for an present the answers that I have found, I will write my one of my guesses as to why Apples have been associated with teaching, and we can see if I was close!  Even though I am not a teacher yet, I have seen the color red  being associated with those in the profession. For example, the initiative: "Red for Ed" , I've heard about this t...

Hello Readers! As I have stated before, I am also using this blog to document my journey to becoming an English/ESL teacher. With that being said, this is me documenting what has happened so far and my plans for what comes next!  As I'm sure you all know, the COVID19 pandemic has affected the lives of many worldwide. Personally, I had to move back off of campus during what would have been my spring break, and later resume all of my classes online. In my state, all schools were closed in-definitively around the end of March as well, and I'm sure other states experienced similar circumstances. Thankfully, I was one of the few groups of students that work at my University that were able to keep their job. I consider myself very lucky to be working from home, but because of all of this, I was really wondering how the transition must have been for teachers, and even if it would change the look of teaching forever! Me, being a student ,  could not experience firsthand what teachers ...

Hello Readers! In the past couple of weeks, in addition to being amidst a pandemic, the world has also been amidst a revolution . Protests around the world have called for change after the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd at the hands of the police. I have only seen things like this in the movies; Thousands of people gathering to protest, blocking traffic, risking their freedom for the justice of others. They have encouraged lots of change, too-  Laws have been passed to ban no-knock warrants (you can read about this here, an article about banning no knock warrants ) , confederate statues are being removed, Minnesota even has plans to reform their WHOLE police department (an article on that  here, an article about Minnesota police reform  ) .  With all this being said, I want to connect the current civil rights movement (it is a movement- every continent has held protests for Black Lives Matter) to something I am passionate about, ...

  Hello Readers!   For this week's blog post, I am going to be talking about something more school-related, and by school-related, I mean "my- personal-homework-assignment -related". As a part of my Digital Writing class, we must write a Digital Artifact analysis paper. A Digital Artifact can be anything ranging from a website to a gaming console, to a specific wiki page. This paper will require analyzing the parts of the Digital Artifact that makes users want to contribute to it, that offers learning, and overall make it practical and appealing for its users. I will use concepts I've learned from the class such as Rhetoric, Virtual Communities, Cooperating versus Collaborating online, and etctera. With all that being said, this blog post will also serve as a sort of introduction to my paper topic and will also give some background information as well. The Digital Artifact I will be analyzing is *drum roll please...*  YouTube. The "YouTube" Logo     Anytime...

     Hello Readers!        I mentioned before in my first blog post that I wanted to become an ESL teacher. To achieve this, in addition to majoring in English and Spanish, I am currently working towards an Applied Language Studies (Linguistics) certification Normally, when I get asked what I am going to school for, and I answer the way I explained above, I get a variety of responses. Maybe they do not know exactly what Linguistics is, or what ESL stands for. So, I am going to break all of this down and explain exactly what I am talking about. What, exactly, is Linguistics?      Linguistics is broadly defined as " The study of Languages". When I tell others that I want to be a Linguist, a lot of them ask about the other languages I speak. Although I am studying Spanish, I do not want to limit Linguists to only studying other languages, as there are many more components. For starters, Linguistics deals with phonetics, syntax, and other fe...