Blog Post #10

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

This week I watched four different videos about Mrs. Kathy Cassidy's strategies in her classroom and I learned a lot from each one.

In the first video Little Kids....Big Potential I saw how she used blogs in her classroom in Canada. The children were so excited about people reading their posts! One student said it makes him want to write better when he knows that he has an audience, which makes me glad that we get to respond to students in our class! Blog posts are a great way for young students to improve their writing skills. The class also has it's own Wiki. This is a great way for students to look up exactly what they need for their projects and when they edit the Wikis the students are learning new information as well. I also liked how she used Skype to have guest speakers. It is hard to get guest speakers to come to your class but with Skype you can get anyone from around the world! 

In Mrs. Cassidy's Skype interview  I learned how she started with integrating technology in her classroom ten years ago with five computers and how she has a very good administration that supports her. She stated that parents are supportive as well because they can see what their child is doing and how they are doing in class. Mrs. Cassidy went on to talk about the importance of using technology and how we need to learn how to integrate it now while we are in college, which I completely agree with! We need to learn to accept these new technologies now so when we get are own classrooms later on, we will be prepared and we won't handicap out students.

In Part Two on the interview Mrs. Cassidy stated that we should start technology in the classroom with what you are interested in which I agree with. How are you supposed to get your kids excited about something that you do not care about? If you start them off with something you like, then you'll start the class off right! She also talked about how she uses Twitter to open up her Personal Learning Network. You can use Twitter to get to know different educators around the world.

In Part Three of the interview  She answered a lot of Dr. Strange's students questions and this goes back to how she uses Skype in her own classroom for her students. She stated that we need to start being more creative in the way we ask our students to present their work because they can look up simple answers on the internet, which is not a bad thing. They can use that information in a collaborative way and "piggy-back" off of it and learn new information at the same time. I also learned ways to keep students safe of the internet. She stated that you need to teach the students where to go and how to comment on each others blogs in a positive way. 

I enjoyed watching Mrs. Cassidy's videos. They were very informative and I learned a lot of useful information from it! 

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