Blog Post #11

Ms. Cassidy

I believe Ms. Cassidy's efforts with her first graders is amazing. I love how she says that teachers should be required to learn how to use technology because the world is changing and you must change too. Our students rely on us to adapt to technology because it isn't the same as two years ago. Teachers must stay on their game. Ms. Cassidy incorporates many technology in her classroom and in her professional life. She uses PLNs, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs. She highly suggests that teachers should use Twitter. It allows us to communicate to others that are just now learning how to teach and questions can easily be answered.

Her students love blogging. They love the fact that people all over the world read their blogs and are interested in what they are writing. They collaborate with students from Gadsden, Alabama. That is pretty amazing because that is near my hometown. However, when students are introduce to the cyber world a lot of safety precautions need to take place. Ms. Cassidy protects her students by telling her students to not put there full name and to not to use their real picture. She also created a class webpage with safe links that don't send her students to questionable sites or that provide links that could send them to unsafe sites.

I believe that I would use blogging and Facebook in my classroom. As a future secondary history teacher, there could be some issues with older students and the temptation to get off course. Blogging would be really useful in a history class. I would encourage them to not use their full names and I would create a class Webpage where I would put the assignments up with direction and links to for the students to do research with. I would love to use Facebook in my class. I read somewhere on the internet where she got her students to make Facebook pages for historical figures. She got her students to write their biographies from that persons point of view. I would also encourage my students to make a second Facebook but under a pseudonym and to create links to their historical figures' profile. One issue with this is students might use it to create social problems within the class and they might use Facebook during class to chat with their friends. If fights on their class Facebook came up, I would probably take away their privilege to use Facebook in class and make do a traditional book report on their historical figures or events until they learn responsibility and I would talk to them about internet etiquette.

Their are a lot of benefits from using all of these resources that Ms. Cassidy has discussed. Collaboration is a huge advantage for the students. Through blogging, the students learn how to communicate with others around the world. It also allows the students to keep with the evolving world around us and with the changing technology. It allows students to keep up with the pace of others and they aren't left behind.