Blog Post 9 - What can we learn from Mrs. Cassidy?

"Education is evolving due to the impact of the Internet. We cannot teach our students in the same manner in which we were taught. Change is necessary to engage students not in the curriculum we are responsible for teaching, but in school. Period." -April Chamberlain
In Mrs. Cassidy's Skype videos she discussed the importance of having updated technology in the classroom, because it isn't going anywhere; it will only advance from here. I believe it is important to find ways to obtain the technology we need in classrooms, if it isn't already available to us. We have to find new resources that will make learning more enjoyable for future generations. When I was in the first grade, like Mrs. Cassidy's students, we learned everything by charts and lessons that required us to hand-write things; whereas today, children are learning by means of personal computers, Smart Boards, and iPads. One of the most fascinating lessons I have witnessed so far was in my field experience from this semester when I observed a first grade class at Griggs Elementary School. The students were in the library learning about how books are organized on the shelves, and the kids were completely baffled by the process...until the librarian made the lesson interactive. The children were able to drag and drop things all over the screen to place the books in the correct order and they used the markers to write the letters to check themselves. This may seem like a lesson that isn't that big of a deal, and maybe it isn't, but learning how the Dewey Decimal System isn't exactly the easiest thing to grasp when you're six years old. I would love to incorporate interactive lessons like this into my classroom, and I hope that whatever school I am teaching in has been blessed with enough iPads for each child so that I can do lessons with the class as a whole, while they work independently on their own iPads.

In Little Kids...Big Potential, Mrs. Cassidy's video about how she runs her classroom, I learned how important it is to teach children to use technology for more than just research or playing games. The students in her class have blogs that they post images and classroom lessons on regularly. Her videos were truly inspiring to me as a future educator! I hope my classroom will be as enjoyable to be in as hers obviously is.