Blog Post #10

Link to Picture

Ms. Cassidy teaches in a way that uses technology often, and she believes strongly that the technology is not going away but will continue to grow. I agree with this statement. Technology has grown so much even over the last few years. In her classroom she has a class blog that she uses with her students, a webpage they can visit to find different educational links, they skype with other people from around the world, etc,. In my future classroom I think that an important tool for me to use as I have mentioned before will be my class blog. I think that a class blog is a good way to keep everyone linked together and be able to collaboratively learn from eachother. An interesting way that Ms. Cassidy uses technology is through a blogging buddy. Each student is assigned to another older student from a different school to comment on their blogs. The students get excited that someoone is comenting on their blogs, and it gives them an opportunity to build a relationship with students outside of their own school. I find this to be beneficial for many reasons but most importantly by hearing how the students get excited that someone viewed their post. If the students are excited about something then that makes the learning process better for everyone.

A big concern for using technology in the classroom is often "How do we keep our children safe". Ms. Cassidy tells her students not to ever post their nastname, only your first. She also tells the students that when they post pictures not to refer directly to who is in the picture. These are great ways of keeping the identity of the students safe. Another concern is keeping what they see monitored. The internet allows you to access anything you want, and this is a priveledge that students should learn not to abuse. In my old school at St. Pauls, we all started using our own laptops in the classroom starting in the 6th grade. It was required that we brought our laptops to class every day. The way that they monitored what sites we were visiting was by blocking innapropriate websites. When I was in school there was a game called "Bubble Trouble", and my friends and I loved to play this game. The administration heard of this game that we were all playing (that was not educational), and immediately blocked the website at school. Similar websites were blocked that were not considered to be educational at the time like Facebook and Twitter. I would be curious to know if they still have Facebook blocked for students. I think that Facebook could be beneficial if used correctly. One way of using Facebook could be to have a group page set up for the students in your class. This could be used for the teacher to post reminders, and for students to juist interact with one another outside of the classroom. There are going to be complications with any new technology being introduced, but I think that there are ways to fix everything.