Blog Post 10

What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

     Viewing this weeks' videos emphasized more the importance of learning and knowing how to present technology in the classroom setting. The teacher that we heard from this week was Mrs. Cassidy, a teacher in the school system in Canada. She teaches first grade and in her first video, "Little Kids...Big Potential" she discusses the multitude of ways that she incorporates technology in her lessons. This video again showed us that kids like having a variety of ways in which they can learn and do their work. One interesting thing to me was that they were able to use their Nintendo DS to practice concepts as well. Additionally in this video I liked how Mrs. Cassidy explained how she thought her students liked having a broader audience in which to reach out to. Her students can see where their audience resides and take pride in knowing that so many people see the work that they are accomplishing.
     In the other videos viewed, Interview with Kathy Cassidy Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3, we learned how she started off with just a few computers and was able to technologically amplify her classroom. Seeing and listening to her approach is very insightful on how to really incorporate Smartboard, blogs, wikis, and Skype into lesson plans. It's never too soon to learn how to use these different medias and by learning the basics now it will be a lot easier to use them later on in the classroom.