First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's class, was a wonderful video made by Ms. Kathy Cassidy, a teacher in Canada, who is grabbing technology by its horns and using it for every educational purpose possible. After watching the video Ms. Cassidy made and the Skype interview with her, I feel that she has the same understanding that I do about technology; Technology is here to stay and we must embrace it. I love how she is finding new ways to incorporate technology into to her teaching, with all the tools available it is easy to be linked to others. The technique that she uses and the one she talks about in her interview is using blogging to help with writing, like a writing center. I can see how blogging is a great tool to help students learn how to write because it allows them to see their work and to use other students as their critics. I don't have a full understanding about how wikis work. However, the little information about how the students use wikis in the video makes me what to explore the idea of using a wiki in my classroom. I know that wikis can help the students by receiving information from others on certain topics to help the students gain knowledge on a subject. Ms. Cassidy also has a classroom blog, where she attaches links to games that the students can play. She has created this site especially for the students and when they are allowed computer time these games and links are readily available for their use. In the Skype interview, Ms. Cassidy talks about using twitter as a resource for information. The little that I have used twitter, I have learned that it is all in who you follow. If you are following the right people you will have access to so many resources that will help you, as an educator, learn ways to use technology for its educational purposes. Some of the impediments that I may face is getting support from co-workers or administrators. Not everyone has adopted the idea of using technology in the classrooms, smart boards are available for use now but not everyone is using blogging. The fear of using the internet is the reason for this apprehension. Ms. Cassidy talks about how she protects her students from seeing things they aren't suppose to and how she protects their identities. These are things that I could present to my co-workers and administrators.
Hi Keely,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a good job on your post. I agree with you completely about Twitter. I haven't really contributed to Twitter either, but I have spent a lot of time looking through other people's tweets. You can learn a lot as long as you are following the right people.
I don't know a lot about Wiki; my oldest son had a teacher that used another teacher's Wiki to get their spelling words. His teacher this year has a Wiki that they use for spelling also. I am sure you can do more than spelling words, but so far that is all I have seen. I would love to learn more about it myself.
I found one sentence that you may want to double check.
"The technique that she uses and the one she talks about in her interview is using blogging to help with writing, like a writing center." You may want to revise this sentence, I felt it was a little awkward and just did't flow smoothly.
Also, you may want to include a link to the Skype interview. Otherwise, you did a great job!
Keely,
ReplyDeleteNice post. Remember to proof read your posts and to include proper ALT and TITLE modifiers for images. Yours seems to be missing those or either the HTML code was done improperly.