Blog Post #10

Interviews with Kathy Cassidy

Kathy Cassidy with her book, Connected from the Start

 In the three interview videos with Kathy Cassidy, Interview 1, Interview 2, and Interview 3, many questions regarding the use of technology in the classroom were resolved. Mrs. Cassidy provided many useful techniques, in addition to various obstacles to be aware of. In her interviews, Mrs. Cassidy states that she normally has her students blog 1-2 times per week if it is a small group, or multiple times if it is a large group. An obstacle that she brought to my attention was that of parental consent. I understand this to be a moderately prominent issue in the district that I plan on teaching in. She states that to make parents more at ease she assures that students do not put their last name anywhere and she does not associate images with names. There were many different benefits as listed by Mrs. Cassidy, however, one that stood out the most to me was that creating a blog early on leads to a broader personal learning network. An additional benefit that was not discussed in the three videos, but catches my attention, is that the students will have a better understanding of technology and social media as a whole. Mrs. Cassidy stated that she recently created a Facebook, and is not very fluent with it. I find that being fluent with technology is highly important in today's society, so becoming associated at an early stage gives more time to become better acquainted with it. I also found Mrs. Cassidy's guidelines for her students' blogs to be very interesting. She not only enforces collaboration and safety, but being a "digital citizen" as well. This is vital because so many people do not think of how their comments can affect someone, and this issue should be addressed early to prevent cyber-bullying in the future. These interviews were extremely helpful and have me very excited for my future as a teacher using technology!