Blog Post #9 Mrs. Cassidy Interview and what I learned

This weeks blog post is about what I feel that we can learn from Mrs. Cassidy in her interview with Dr. Strange. The first part of this assignment had us looking at a video that Mrs. Cassisdy's 1st grade class made to show what they are doing in class. Little Kids...Big Potential is the video that they made. In this video the kids give a brief rundown of what they do with technology in the classroom. Their list of technology uses range from making a blog to using skype to talk to an expert. Watching videos like this gets me more and more excited to become a teacher and use today's and tomorrow's technology in my classroom to teach my students.

The first part of the interview is found here There are some very interesting things that Mrs. Cassidy brings to light in this part. In this part she talks about how she got involved in using technology the way she does for the students. The most valuable things that took away from this part of the video are how to try to keep your students protected while they are on the internet and that technology is here to stay and will only become a larger part of education as time goes by. In reference to keeping the students safe a good example is set by Mrs. Cassidy by not allowing the students to post pictures of themselves with their name. She also refrains from letting them post their last names. This I think is a great way to help keep the students protected.

The second part of the interview can be found here. In this part of the interview Mrs. Cassidy talks about how she got into twitter and how it helps her. The most that I took from this video is that twitter can be a very useful tool if used correctly. Mrs. Cassidy herself said "at first it doesn't seem like it will do anything for you." But she also said eventually as you follow people that are closely related to the topics that you are looking at then it becomes useful because they might post a link to something you never would have seen otherwise.

The last part of the interview can be found here. In this part of the interview she takes questions from students in EDM310. I found one of the answers to a question very helpful to any teacher not just a physical education teacher. The scenario is that something gets cancelled. It is far easier for the teacher to send out a text or post an announcement on something like a class webpage than to go down to the office and try to get everyone's attention via the intercom to get the message across. By sending the text or posting an announcement then the teacher is sure that everyone got the message. This three part interview was very interesting and I took a few things away from it that I will probably use. More than likely I will use some type of classblog to integrate technology into my classroom and I think I will be using twitter more and more to expand my PLN.