Blog Post #9

Ms. Cassidy's classroom, in my opinion, is a great place to learn. I like how she approaches the use of technology with extreme caution. It is important for a student at that age to know what information is appropriate to put out on the internet, and what is not. One of the questions, towards the end, was "how often do her student blog per day or week?". She responded with that it depends on the class size. I like how Ms. Cassidy uses a rotation system to teach guided reading activities. For example one group of students may be doing spelling activities, and another group may be doing reading comprehension. The benefits would be greater for a larger classroom. It allows more one on one time when broken into groups. If it were a smaller class it would be easier just to go over one lesson at a time, one subject at a time. I would use this technique as well, one of the problems that could happen is the students may get off track with the work he or she is suppose to be doing, and find an online video game to play. To answer that problem I would have time deadlines to meet. Say if the students have to blog about a story they just read, I would give them 30 minutes to an hour. Well if the student does not get done by the time that hour is up, he or she will not get to play games during their break. In other words it would be like a internet time out. Doing so would hopefully compel them to be time efficient so they can have that 15 minute or however long break to play games, and not worry about getting in trouble. If I was in another setting where they might be on desktops to do a portion of the work I would have a program called ITALC which allows me to view their screens and control each desktop if needed.