Blog Post# 11

Little Kids Big Potential

In this video, Ms. Cassidy’s first grade students demonstrate ways on how she uses technology in her lesson throughout her classroom. The first topic that is pointed out in the video is blogging. Ms. Cassidy’s students explained how they write blogs and get comments from other people. From my experience, I believe that blogging can make learning more engaging and that students will tend to spend more time on an activity because they are enjoying it. Also, I think that blogging is a great tool for any teacher to use because students can help out other students by commenting on another students work. Overall, I believe that blogging helps with reading and writing skills. The only problem would be that it would take time for students and teachers to gain the knowledge needed to make blogging successful; therefore, I would develop videos demonstrating how to use blogging. Another topic was that she developed a webpage for her students that has everything the students do in class; therefore, the students can access their work outside of class. This would be a great tool for all teachers, students, and parents. The teacher has everything organized for the students on a webpage that benefits the students by making it as easy as a click of a mouse to access lessons. Parents can always keep up with their child’s work and know what they are learning in class daily. If there is a problem with the webpage a whole day’s lesson plan could be altered if the teacher relies on this technology daily in her classroom. The focus of the students will also be lost due to the technical difficulties. The solution for this situation would be to always have a back up plan. Also, her students can see what other students are doing in other classes around the country. Wiki was the next topic that the kids talked about in this video. The kids stated that they used Wiki to find out what a term means and created a Wiki about the alphabets. The University of South Alabama students also created a Wiki using alphabets and shared them with Ms. Cassidy’s class. Next the students explained how they created videos individually and in groups. I think that group activities are really important because it allows students to be creative and work with other students to distinguish between their ideas. Interactive group learning activities can lead to some students doing all the work and others not doing as much. The solution that I would use for this is have my students evaluate each other daily outside of class and email them to me so it will be confidential. The students also stated that they used Skype to communicate to other people and to their reading buddies in other schools. Her students also informed me on how they played an interactive game called Nintendogs, which they accessed on Nintendo DS’s. Nintendogs is a pet stimulation video game.