Blog Assignment #11

Little Kids...Big Potential:   
I really enjoyed watching the students in Little Kids....Big Potential. It is fascinating to see how far elementary school has come since I was attending it. I think Ms. Cassidy's approach to technology is very commendable. She mentioned that she has been using a class web page for ten years now. This fact really stuck out to me because the internet and technology were not as much of a necessity ten years ago as they are now. It is great that she was teaching her students ten years ago to use the internet because now they are in high school and I am sure they are needing the internet on a daily basis. I also like the fact that she sends an informative letter and waiver home to the parents at the beginning of the year explaining that the children are going to be doing work online through out the school year. This keeps the parents informed and lets them know what their children will be doing. It also allows the parents to be more involved and open about the use of technology.

When I have my own classroom, I would like to use all of the techniques Ms. Cassidy uses. My favorite technique that she uses in her classroom is the class blog. I think it is so important for the children to have access to other students around the world. The class blog gives the children the opportunity to learn about other cultures and rituals. A class blog also helps with spelling and grammar. Although spell check can sometimes be annoying, for a young student it could be very beneficial. Not only does spell check tell you the word is misspelled, it also gives the correct spelling. A class blog can also encourage shy children to open up more about themselves. They probably will tend to be more willing to write about themselves and have it be read by someone across the world (and their fellow classmates) than they would be to stand in front of the class and talk about themselves. The use of the wiki is very beneficial to the students as well. Their different wikis allow them to read about other cultures, rituals, and traditions. Another great tool Ms. Cassidy uses is having the experts talk to her class via Skype. I think this is an amazing idea; imagine learning about something and having an expert on the topic only seconds away!
As I mentioned before, it is fascinating to see how much technology is being used in elementary classrooms as compared to when I was in elementary school (which wasn't THAT long ago). I can only imagine what kind of technology will be being used ten years from now. As a future educator, I am extremely excited about what the future holds. The use of technology in the classroom makes the possibilities for learning literally endless. It also requires teachers to constantly learn new things, which I believe is the key to being an excellent teacher.