Blog Assignment #11

Ms. Cassidy's Technological Approaches to Learning

In Ms. Cassidy's video, she shared ideas that uses to implement technology into learning with her first graders. Some examples included a class webpage with links for the children to use while learning at home. Like our class, she also has the children set up on blogs where they can improve their writing skills and receive comments from friends and other people. In addition she also has them set up on Skype so that they can talk to and share ideas with people who are not close by. For example, the video showed that they had an interview with a geologist who lived in a different state. But, the most creative use of technology, in my opinion, was the Nintendo DS.  The children had an opportunity to use if to better their problem solving skills. This was the first time in this course that I had ever seen or thought of using a game system for learning. I would love to have DS systems in my classroom someday. I believe that it is not only an interactive but also fun way for the children to learn. This is just the type of technology to get kids excited. However, the only problem that I see with using the DS is that they are expensive to purchase. With poor school funding from the state, each classroom would probably not be able to furnish one for each child. So, an approach to that would be to also teach the children the value of sharing. Each day, I could rotate the children in groups so that  each child is able to use the game system at least once or twice a week. Technology is a great thing to be excited about in education. I believe that no child should be left out and there always solutions to little glitches.