Blog Post 11

Little Kids....Big Potential is a video posted by a first grade teacher from Saskatchewan named Kathy Cassidy that shows her students engaging with technology in many different ways. Her first grade students use blogs, Wikis, videos and even Nintendo DS in many different ways to help them learn their assignments and also learn skills that will help them in the future. The students in the video seem engaged and excited about learning in these ways. Ms. Cassidy also participated in a Skype interview with Dr. Strange and some students from EDM 310. In this interview she mentions some very interesting points about her first graders and technology. One thing that really stood out to me was when she mentioned that to a first grader technology is neither good nor bad it just is. Technology has no negative connotations to her students because it is simply another new learning experience. Most people would find it hard to believe that first grade students would be capable of using such "complicated" technology in a classroom, but these people come to this conclusion with their preconceived notions about what is difficult or challenging. Technology is almost like learning a new language for older people who have never dealt with it before, but to a first grader, it is simply learning a language. Everything is new to them. That is the main reason why I think Ms. Cassidy's work is so inspiring and important. She is able to help young kids understand the ways in which technology can be used for good, and also teach them how to avoid the pitfalls that are possible if it is used incorrectly.

Although I will be teaching in either a middle school or high school, I still enjoyed seeing the work Ms. Cassidy is doing. I hope that more teachers take the initiative as she has and begin teaching technology to students at a younger age. For one thing, it makes it much easier to implement more tools later on in the education process, and it allows secondary education teachers like myself to focus on the content of student work in blogs and other areas of technology rather than being forced to teach them how to actually blog. I hope to incorporate some type of blogging into my classroom along with other types of technology. I would at least like for students to have a weekly post of some type because I believe that having an audience is an important part of the writing process. It also allows students to receive feedback from people other than their own teachers, which is important. As a future English teacher, I think a great deal about ways to improve student writing, and I think blogging is an excellent tool to do this.