Blog Assignment #10

            In the video Little Kids…Big Potential, students are discussing what type of technology is used in their first grade classroom with their teacher Mrs. Cassidy. From this video, I can tell these students are totally engaged in technology. Mrs. Cassidy has a blog that her students post to. This allows her students to become better writers and see what people outside of the classroom think of their writing. Another form of technology used in her classroom was the Wiki. When students needed to learn about a certain topic, they used Wiki. Videos were another tool used to learn and teach in Mrs. Cassidy’s classroom. And the one thing they all used that I thought was a little out of the box was their Nintendo gaming systems called DS. These are usually used for playing games for fun, but Mrs. Cassidy has transformed the DS’s into another way of teaching.

            One of the things I would love to use in my classroom is the classroom blog. Before EDM 310, I really did not know a lot about blogs and how great of a resource they are. I would like to use an online class blog as a portfolio for my students. In Interview with Kathy Cassidy Part 1, she discusses how the class blog allows her students to be in tuned with technology and the blog is used for the betterment of writing skills. Because this blog would be on the worldwide web, the only problem I would run into is if some parents wouldn't want their children to be exposed that greatly. To deal with this issue, I would put emphasis on the fact that the class blog will be strictly for educational purposes and no full names of their children will ever be posted on the blog. Some of the positives this could bring to my classroom-better writing skills, another way to show off work, memories that will be online forever and a sense of unity in my classroom. Students will be able to see how their classmates write and I think this will make them excited to be in class with each other.