Blog Post #9

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?
In the first video with Mrs. Cassidy, She talks about many different things. Mrs. Kathy Cassidy is a 1st grade teacher and firmly believes that technology is an important factor within the classroom. Although her administrative staff doesn't discourage or encourage her directly, the parents of her student's find the technology a positive thing in the classroom. It allows for an audience and for the students to reflect on their own work. Most importantly, parents like the online work so that they are able to see the progress that their own children have made in the class. That is such a huge deal for parents to see their children achieving greatness. Technology is not going to go away. In fact, it will just continue to impact our classrooms more and more as technology progresses. Cassidy says kids and technology go hand in hand. So, the first graders sometimes seem to know more about some online programs than most of my peers do. It's amazing how fast they can pick up on online programs and it's because technology is a part of the every day life now.

During the second video, Cassidy makes a very good point of how to begin using technology in the classroom. It is good to start with what you are most interested in. For example, if you are interested in video you can start with iMovie or YouTube. Another example would be to use Blogger if you're interest is writing for your students. This is a very good place to start with your students. Then, once you start you can progress and add in more programs to your every day lessons. In the last video, she answers questions from John Strange's students. Cassidy informs us about how often she uses blogging. You can use Blogger every day in the classroom, once a week, or even once a month. When using Blogger, you can blog individually or as a group. These are different methods you can use in the classroom to accomplish different academic goals. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Skype sessions with Mrs. Cassidy and I can definitely say I learned from them. I'm learning so much in this course to use in my future classroom and I can't wait to put all of it into action.