Well now, let me tell you—twitter is quite a doozy. I used to use twitter when it first started really booming around 2010, but things have really changed since then. I remember hearing about Ashton Kutcher beating out CNN to have the first twitter account to reach one million followers. That was back in 2009, and now, just 9 years later, it isn't uncommon for people to have tens of millions, in some cases even a hundred million followers. It goes to show you the immense power and velocity at which the internet is being integrated into our societies. For the first time in history, almost anybody with a cellphone has the capacity to reach an audience of hundreds of millions of people via twitter. The rapidity and immediacy with which we're able to access information and communicate with one another is changing the social landscape on a global scale, and I think it's slowly rewiring how we have communicated for hundreds and thousands of years. Unfortunately, human computing power is peanuts compared to the speed of technological innovation, and I don't think it's necessarily healthy to radically alter human communication from face-to-face, long form discussions to 140 character, rapid-fire back-and-forths. So, I stay off twitter for the most part. Aside from a few educational and comedic accounts I just don't get much enjoyment out of the darn thing.  If I want information about what's happening in the world, I'll go to reddit.

Digital divide mainly affects poorer communities where schools can't garner or gather enough funding to keep up with the continually evolving technology being integrated into the modern day education system. I would even stretch the definition to include a lack of funding for updated textbooks, especially in the arts and sciences where there is constantly new research and discovery. It can directly affect how the student thinks about learning in a developing world. Children need to be comfortable using technology in a classroom setting so they can develop the necessary technological fluency that's becoming inherent in the modern world. However I would conquer digital divide would depend on the school and subject matter I was teaching, but let's say I was in an underfunded school teaching English to a fifth grade class. I would stress the importance of taking advantage of technological opportunities outside the classroom and try to always have the most up-to-date information to exchange, if the tools themselves were lacking.

I would like to implement Word and some kind of educational video game software catered to the subject matter I was teaching. Word would be useful because students are likely going to be writing papers their entire academic career, and word has a plethora of practical functions. Educational video games can teach children almost anything from basic addition and multiplication to demonstrating what a dissection might be like on a cadaver. With video games you can bring experiences and situations to life that you would have a hard time recreating in a real-world setting. This opens up all sorts of doors when thinking about how to educate students on different career paths and so on. So, yeah, something like SecondLife maybe? I would have to look into it a little more.

Bon voyage, compatriots.

—MC