Blog Journal #8

    Working on the web design assignment was challenging for me, as this was the first time I ever designed a website.  By exploring the web design tools and some trial and error, I was able to discover how to make my website turn out accessible, informative, and aesthetically pleasing.  To design it effectively, I used CRAP: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.  The resources I feature on my website are essential for students success, and since less is more and overwhelming students with non-essential information is not beneficial, following this acronym was a great way to meet my goal: clear contrast between the background and text makes it easy to read, repeating the font all across keeps design uniform, and proximity allows for the related items to be together, ultimately clarifying information for the audience.  What I liked the most about this assignment is that it was practice for the "real-world".  In the future, I will most likely have a class website or similar, so getting to practice making it as a student will save me time in the future.  I already know how to design on Weebly, so that time spent figuring it out will be saved in the future.  Overall, I thought it was a good exercise to practice what we learn in class and see how we can use it in the future. 

Check my website out: 

On QR Codes:

     As funky as they look, QR codes are a useful tool in the classroom!  Throughout my time in high school, many teachers used them in their class slides to add additional information pertaining to the lesson, or attach Google Forms for us to access.  They are widely used in college too, as many instructors also add them to their class slides for us to access additional content or resources during class time.   In the future, I will use them in those same ways.  A creative way I would utilize them in my classroom would be in a "mystery activity": students are given three QR codes that each access a different text to read.  They pick one of the three to scan, and the reading they access is the one they are assigned to read.  It could be an original way of adding some fun to my lessons!  I believe QR are an easy way for students to access additional content or tools in a way that is time-effective.  As teachers, we must be mindful of the time spent in activities and lessons, but also in transitions and class procedures, so if a teacher is able to save one or two minutes by having their students scan a QR code instead of typing out the URL of a website, that time is accumulated and spent in a productive manner.  Ultimately, QR codes are a time-efficient way of accessing information.  

Case Study:

Generative AI offers a substantial productivity boost for a 12th-grade English teacher by automating tedious, repetitive tasks. For example, a teacher like Ms. Anya, tasked with preparing a unit on rhetorical analysis for her AP students, can use a tool like Gemini or ChatGPT to instantly generate a series of differentiated reading passages based on a single news article—producing a simplified version for students needing support and an enriched version with an accompanying analysis prompt for advanced learners, saving several hours of manual scaffolding and material creation. Furthermore, she can input her essay rubric and a student's rough draft to receive a "first draft" of targeted, actionable feedback on evidence integration and counter-argument development. This capability reduces the time she spends on initial, low-stakes grading by half, freeing her to focus on high-value activities like one-on-one writing conferences. However, this efficiency introduces a critical ethical dilemma: When a student questions whether the "perfect" feedback they received was written by the teacher or the AI, the teacher must choose between transparency and trust. Admitting to using the AI's draft comments risks devaluing the perceived authenticity of the feedback and potentially undermining the teacher-student connection, while deflecting or lying sacrifices professional integrity and fails to model the critical digital literacy students need. The teacher's challenge is to determine how to be honest about the tool's use while simultaneously affirming that their final human judgment and care remain central to the learning process. (Source: Google Gemini)

The way I would address this issue would be to use AI in a different manner.  Human proof reading and edition is essential to make any type of feedback on a first draft effective and personalized.  When the teacher is tasked with providing individual feedback, they are expected to be as original and concise as the student is expected to be in their writing, therefore the teacher's reliance on Generative AI to grade is sort of a violation of expectations.  Of course, the teacher is held up to different standards on AI use than the students, but when it comes to something as essential in learning as feedback, there must be human intervention.  The teacher's insight is nuanced with what they know about the student the AI does not, and it is with that prior knowledge that the teacher is able to tailor feedback and truly make it insightful.  Also, it is quite useless for the teacher to solely rely on AI for feedback on first drafts as she will not even be aware of what the students need support in and help them effectively.