Blog Post #11

In Little Kids....Big Potential, Mrs. Cassidy's students tell us about the ways hey use technology in their classroom. They talk about writing in their blogs, and how it makes them better writers. They were so excited to receive comments from their family, and even we EDM310 students. I felt so proud to be involved in helping these students! They also talk about the ways they surf the web, and how they do it safely. They even use skype to video chat with other classes and experts, which I thought was a great idea. This video gave me a lot of ideas for my future classroom.

I think all of her techniques have potential to be used in my classroom. First of all it depends on what resources I'm given. Hopefully by the time I have my own classroom, each of my students will have an iPad. I thought it was interesting that Dr. Strange brought up the students' parents in the interview and what they thought about their students not only being on the internet, but their pictures and work being posted as well.I loved Ms. Cassidy's response though: she only uses first names and she doesn't post their pictures with their names.

I really like how she said, "For every body there's a different entry point and it's good to play off what you're interested in". This is a great statement for teachers because they can get these students started with whatever they want to enforce in their classrooms, for example, if they want their students to be better writers, they can create blogs. When the interview is led by the students, she talks about Facebook, which has never really been considered a great tool for educational purposes. However, Mrs. Cassidy says she believes it could be, as do I. I actually have Facebook groups for several of my classes where students can post questions that can be answered by the teacher or other students, which is very helpful.

I have to say that watching this video helped me realize how important some of these PLN's are, even after Dr. Strange has Emphasized them so much. I picked up some great ideas and got a lot of my questions answered.