"What Can We Learn from Ms. Cassidy?"
For this week's blog post, we were required to watch a few videos that let us see technology use in the classroom from a teacher's point-of-view. Ms. Cassidy is a teacher who clearly cares about the well-being of her students and she's someone that I've learned from just by watching a video about her class and her words via a Skype call. Ms. Cassidy's approach to technology is an approach that I need to adopt because with all of this technology that's available for use in the classroom, my mind may become a little overwhelmed; she uses technology that betters her students and helps them learn more rather than using technology for "fun." With technology quickly advancing, she made a point that we need to keep up with it because if it's available for use and can help our students, then why not use it? When it comes to her techniques, I would more than likely use the blogging once per week because it allows students to keep in contact with each other and allows each other to read what their classmates have posted rather than continually passing out papers (which can be a hassle, sometimes). An impediment that may occur would be that not all children may have access to such technology outside the classroom. If you were to assign a blog post to do outside of the classroom, you've got to be sure that all of your students are capable of doing the assignment when school isn't in session. Ms. Cassidy opened my perspective on a few things, which I'm grateful for because I'm not extremely eager about using so many technology outlets in my future classroom.
After viewing Little Kids, Big Potential, it made me realize that by the time those students reach high school, they'll be more technologically advanced than I am. These children are using technology to their benefit and they're starting at such a young age! I didn't learn how to properly use a search engine until I was at least a teenager and these kids are starting at six years old and I'm truly amazed how well they are at it so far. When they make blog posts, they get excited to see comments from their classmates, friends, family, and even their teacher! One child made the comment, "never say bad stuff 'cause you might hurt someone's feelings," and he hit the nail on the head with that one because it truly is important to build your classmates/students up, not tear them down. Another child even commented on how he loves to go home and be able to read his fellow classmates' blogs and comment on them and that absolutely thrills me because if they're eager to do this at a young age, hopefully they'll be eager at higher levels as well. I didn't even know what a "Wiki" was until maybe two years ago and these kids are more proficient at it than I am! What they don't realize is that they're learning a multitude of things at one time: expanding their history knowledge, improving reading skills, typing skills, and expanding their vocabulary; it's amazing how ONE tool can provide interdisciplinary skills for our students. When I was young, I had a Nintendo DS and played the same game that these kids were playing, "Nintendogs," and by working with their classmates, they were able to share the technology and work together to take care of a virtual dog. When playing this game together, these kids are furthering their problem-solving skills by thinking of ways to care for this virtual dog and when you make decisions as a team, you see that teamwork pays off! 
As previously said, I've learned a lot by watching these videos. When you're open to seeing things from a different perspective, you gain more insight than you realize. In the video she made about her classroom and students, her students taught others how to use technology and how we should approach other students' blogs by being nice rather than mean. In Part 1 of the videos, she explained to us how she started with technology and how long she's been using it in her classroom. She made many valid points but one point that I'll continually agree with is that technology isn't going away and that we need to adapt and continue to refresh ourselves so that we don't get smothered in all of the new technology that's quickly advancing. She also made the point that teachers don't want to change the way they're teaching because they don't see anything wrong with it and they see teaching technology as more of a hassle rather than a learning tool. As a future educator, I won't adopt that mentality because if there's something out there that can benefit my students, I want to know about it! The internet may be a big place but there's so much to learn from one another and being able to broaden a student's horizon through technology is an exquisite thing! By not letting students use the technology that's available to them, Ms. Cassidy claims that we're handicapping our students. While there will be people who disagree with that, I fully agree because many of these tools available are free and will remain that way; let students expand their knowledge and skills through these tools because that's why they're made available. I promise not to be that close-minded teacher who thinks technology is going away because it's surely not! When you let students use technology, they develop their own online network and once they start that network, they're able to build on it for the rest of their lives. Technology also lets parents track their child's progress without having to come for face to face meetings; that's beneficial because parents may not have the time to take out of their day to come sit for a meeting. Rather than face to face conferences, parents have the convenience of seeing how well or poorly their child is doing--even from the palm of their hand by their smartphones. Ms. Cassidy claims that we're not able to use the tools that were used 10-20 years ago because technology has completely demolished them; she's right because rather than having to keep up with a paper grade book, you've got it all on the technology you were provided and with this technology, you can learn from people around the world and that alone is an intriguing thought!
In Part 2 of the videos, Ms. Cassidy was asked to share how someone who's not technologically sound may start to use certain technologic outlets. The first thing was to start with what you're interested in and that's so true because you can quickly become bored with what you're not interested in and it may turn you off to other outlets because if it made you this bored, then why continue using it? She also claimed that there's a different entry point for each of us and of course I agree with that because we're all different and our tastes are unique. I, for one, am still trying to learn the ways of Twitter. At first, Ms. Cassidy said that she thought using Twitter wasn't necessary because you feel as if nobody is listening or reading what you're saying. Honestly, I'm still at that point because I've yet to see how Twitter is going to benefit me but I won't give up on it because I know that in order to gain full knowledge on something, you must see it through rather than giving up on it.
