Blog Post #11

Skype Interview With Ms. Cassidy
It was amazing to see The First Graders in Ms. Cassidy's Class  making use of technology in their classroom. I could not believe these children knew how to effectively use these tools. Ms. Cassidy has done a wonderful job incorporating technology into her classroom. Her students learn through wikis, blogs, videos, and skype sessions with other students and classrooms around the world.

She said that her students get excited about their blogs when people view and comment on them. They know that everyone can read them, not just their teacher. Her students want to write quality posts and they want people to comment on them. The fact that her students are excited is so great! Their parents can also keep up with what they are doing on their own time. This should be very important to parents because they can see first hand how their child is progressing. She also makes sure that her students are making appropriate comments on each others blogs. Ms. Cassidy makes sure that everyone is positive and respectful in their blog posts and comments.


Ms. Cassidy brings up the issue of safety for her students. She makes sure that her students never put their last names on any of their online work, and they do not match their pictures with names. I know a lot of parents, teachers, and students themselves worry about safety online and this is a great way to keep students identity partially confidential. Ms. Cassidy also has class web pages set up so that her students can go to them and click on links that she wants them to visit. These links include games, text, etc... She tells them that they should only click on the links that she provides for them and ignore everything else. By doing this, she prevents them from accidentally going to web-sites that are inappropriate or not related to school activities.

She stressed that her PLN's have helped her immensely build her use of technology in her classroom. She gets new ideas all the time from people she has met through networking. They also help her learn how to do things and answer questions she might have about technology. She believes that all teachers should be technologically literate because the world is changing and everything is based on technology. By using things like twitter and blogs she has been able to become a technologically literate educator.

I think by using Ms. Cassidy's approaches to bring technology into the classroom I could build an effective and positive learning environment for my students. They will learn how to be collaborative learners, how to share, and how to be more creative and excited about learning. Students, parents, and teachers could all reflect on the students work, and we could all learn and grow together.