Sunday, April 15, 2012

Blog Post 11

Little Kids...Big Potential
Ms. Cassidy has done an outstanding job with incorporating technology into her first grade classroom. She integrates technology into her curriculum in order to help her students achieve skills they will need to become lifelong learners.My favorite part of Mrs. Cassidy's curriculum is incorporating Nintendo DS games into the school day. Educational video games can provide those "head fake" learning moments, Randy Pausch, talked about.  Students can be actively engaged and learning while they think they are just playing a game and having fun.  The skype interview with Ms. Cassidy  was very inspiring. She began integrating technology into her classroom when she received five computers for her first grade class. She was not able to download anything onto the computers, so she searched on the internet for things to do with the computers in her classroom.  She started out with her own web page and then decided to start a class blog. She chose to help herself, research, and find ways to make use of the technology she had available to her. It is great how she changes the way she uses technology depending on the needs of her students. I definitely plan on using blogs in my classroom. I also plan on allowing my students to use their own personal handheld devices in my classroom. As a future high school history teacher I know that most (if not all) of my students will have smartphones. I believe this approach will benefit my students because it will make learning history more interesting than strictly traditional lecturing. I also believe it will help them to become more engaged in the learning process as well as retain more information.
educational gaming cat and numbers

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