Blog Assignment 11

I love how Ms. Cassidy incorporates technology into the classroom. Honestly, I would like to use technology in every way she does. Through her classroom video and other assignments from EDM 310, I have seen the benefits that come from the bits of technology she uses. The first thing that I would like to include in my class is blogging. As many of the children said, it helps them write better. In my ideal classroom, I would have a class blog website. It would include my blog and an individual blog page for each student. The children's parents and the rest of the community could see all the great things that we are doing in my classroom. For example, when I was in elementary school we were required to buy a composition book to put a daily journal entry in. The entry was either discussing a topic of the teacher's choice or free writing. We would have to include an illustration. Since I will be introducing blogging to the classroom, my students can basically do what I did in my composition book using their blog.

I don't see myself running into a lot of problems. Right now, I could only think of two. There could be those days, like Sunday for me, where technology just fails. For example, computers could freeze or all of the projects you created could disappear. Moments like these could be teaching moments for the children. I could teach patience and a positive attitude until the problem is fixed. Also, I could teach children sharing. When the student is having a difficult problem with their computer, they can share with another student. This would be called cooperative learning. The only other problem that could possibly arise is cheating. There is an easy solution to this, that Ms. Cassidy talked about in her Skype interview. It is up to the teacher to ask for the content in a different way each year. I could assign the same video to watch, book to read, etc. I just have to ask my questions in different ways or ask for different things.

As I stated earlier, I see the techniques Ms. Cassidy uses to be very beneficial to her classroom. For this reason, I think it would be beneficial to my classroom. I already discussed this a bit, but blogging helps children write better. I expect students to work hard, but I don't expect them to be perfect. Blogging allows children to get positive feedback. Their parents, peers, or I could say how they could have written the sentence better (ie: grammar or spelling mistakes). The techniques Ms. Cassidy uses also teach valuable life skills, like sharing, communication, and collaboration. I had a DS and Nintendogs when I was little, but I never thought that they could be used as a learning tool. I would love to incorporate the games children love, like Ms. Cassidy did. They had to work together to make their puppy happy, but they also had to share the DS system in their groups. Another tool that used communication and collaboration skills was their wiki. I feel like I could go on for days about how great all of these tools are. I must say I learned about a lot of things that I could incorporate into my classroom.