Blog Post 11

Ms. Cassidy's class is really a great example of how we can get our students involved in learning like it SHOULD be in the classroom. From listening to Ms. Cassidy's responses, I could tell that she thinks that her students really enjoy getting comments from others on their blogs. This is a cool way to encourage them to continue to learn and be involved with technology.

In the first video, the children talk about how their reading and writing improves every time they write on their blog. This is one way to get children to learn on their own and keep reading on their own.

The Wiki helps the children in Ms. Cassidy's class get a head start in researching and asking others about different things they want to know about. I think this is a great way to get the students really thinking about the subject that they want to learn. The students are learning about things from others and not necessarily by the teacher in the classroom. This is great because I would have loved to be able to ask someone else to review my work and to acctually add to my research. This opens up new ideas, new understanding, and different points of view. With these new things presented, then the children can really begin to learn about things from more that just their point of view and use new found knowledge.



I really think I will take Ms. Cassidy's advice about using blogs. Depending on which grade I teach, I think that my students should have a blog and explore other blogs to find information about different things pertaining to science. Mostly, I really like the idea of have a class blog to post class activity. I think this will be benifcal to the students and the students' parents. I really have enjoyed this blog and I hope to continue with one for all the classes I might teach.

Ms. Cassidy also talked about the importance of Twitter and Skype. I know that Twitter will be very important in my PLN and in finding teachers to add to my PLN, but right now, my Twitter account has really accomplished nothing. I know that Ms. Cassidy talked about how her Twitter wasn't doing much for her the first time she used it so I will keep an open mind about Twitter.
Skype has really great potential with me and my learning of the diverse ways in which we can communicate. I have used Skype very few times but I know that it can be useful in the classroom. It would be so great if I could use Skype to talk to teachers in a higher education to talk to my classes about sciences and different subjects that I choose. Also I think it would be awesome if I could communicate with other classes with my class and have a two class discussion on different topics. These are just a few ways in which I can use Skype to make my classroom seem to reach out and grab information from individuals or different groups of people.