Blog Post 10

How Can We Learn From Mrs. Cassidy?
Mrs. Cassidy is a teacher that is very involved with using technology in her classroom such as video, blogging, and audio and she strongly believes that technology is here to stay and will continue to change and grow. In this case, she also believes that teachers should be very familiar with all of the technology so they can use it throughout their classroom. I happen to agree with this statement that she has made due to the fact that the world is as matter of fact changing and change is never going to stop and I think we have to adapt to the changes. Technology has done nothing but grow over the years and it is going to continue being like that. Mrs. Cassidy uses webpages for the students to search things and to help them learn on their own. She also uses a class blog to where the world can see it and she posts videos on the blog of students and what they learned that day. She also lets the students use Nintendo DS to teach them how to solve problems through fun games and to share with other students.
Mrs. Cassidy became involved with technology in her classroom around ten years ago when her technology coordinator of the school mentioned different things about class technology and she was one of the first teachers to reach out and try it. Five years ago was when she started blogging and two years ago was when she did the class videos. How she goes about protecting her students' identity is she only puts the first name of the students and she posts pictures but not to match the name and the picture. Mrs. Cassidy says that the good thing about blogging is the audience. When the students write on paper, they are just giving it to the teacher. When you blog, they are writing it for the whole world to see it through a tool that Cassidy uses Class Blog Meister. Through this tool they can get more advice and feedback about their work that they submit.
Mrs. Cassidy talks about in one of the interviews that teachers should start by using technology in whatever their more interested in to learn about using technology in your classroom. Throughout her time, she learned about Twitter and became more involved in it overtime. She saw it to be very useful because she got feedback and great advice from others. She found helpful links and tools from the people that she followed and that she uses to this day.
In one of the videos that was given to me to watch was students at South Alabama in my EDM310 class asking Mrs. Cassidy different questions and getting advice for their future in the classroom. One student asked how often she uses blogs in her classroom and she answered by saying that she gets her class to blog atleast once a week as a class. She informed the students that were interviewing her that she believes the internet is not a source to cheat, it is a source to collaborate and learn on your own and I completely agree with that statement. Overtime, I have learned a lot by using the internet and technology.
In my future classroom, I will definitely be using the class blog like Mrs. Cassidy did. I think it is a great way to involve the students and as well as keeping them updated on daily news, assignments, and tests. It has been a great experience with using blogs and posting them on my page with my EDM310 class.