Digital Tool Proficiencies
Digital skills get put into action through the use of digital tools, which are becoming only more abundant as the Internet gets more widely used and digital tools continue to get developed by a wider variety of companies and individuals. Of this multitude of digital tools, I've developed the ability to use many of them, which have aided in both my academic and personal realms.
Blogger
Blogger is a free online service that allows individuals to post entries to their blogs as well as modify the layout of their blog page. It can easily be used in connection with a Google email account. In the fall semester of 2017, I participated in a course which involved weekly reflections on the readings of the week, which I have included in all the blog posts. In the future I aim to use this as a semi-formal platform to post my thoughts on a subject or respond to other blogs on the site.
Padlet
Padlet is a free online tool that can also be used in connection with a Google email account. It is used to create a digital 'bulletin board' on which anything can be posted, from text to images to video. It has multiple formats that can be easily swapped between in order to effectively get the ideas across, depending on the situation. Padlet also allows connecting the various 'blocks' of text or media in order to better organize concepts. I used this to create a board about Virginia Woolf and about my trip to New York City, which was a part of a course I took at Le Moyne.
Microsoft Word
A word processor developed and released by Microsoft, Microsoft Word has become ubiquitous in the academic realm. It allows for easy formatting and editing of text documents. I have used it throughout my academic career for everything from presentation outlines to full research papers. Most recently I utilized Microsoft Word for a larger paper on Hate Propaganda in Rwanda, linked below, which demonstrates many of the features that Word has to format its pages.
Google Slides & Google Docs
These digital tools provided by Google demonstrate how the Internet really helps people connect and collaborate on group projects. Slides, a presentation editor, and Docs, a word processor, allow multiple people to access the page and add ideas to it. I have used these tools extensively in group projects throughout high school and the beginning of college, since it is a common place for people to put their ideas and research that adds to the overall project. I recently worked with a group to create a debate presentation on the role of the UN in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which is linked in pdf form below.
Java (Eclipse)
Java is an Object Oriented programming language, and Eclipse is an external program that allows the coder to write and compile the code. Eclipse uses Java in its implementation, and Java has been popular as a coding language in both industry and academics. Additionally, skills in Java can also translate to other coding languages, such as C and C++, since they utilize similar syntax and can perform a lot of the same operations. I learned Java during my senior year of high school and I hope to continue developing my ability in this language. I developed a simple 'avoid boxes' game, and the main running code is linked below. The full game includes additional files, but only one file can be linked to the button. Contact me to get the other files of the game that can be run in Eclipse in Java.