In order to find my electronic contact for this assignment, I emailed six different classes and teachers from different sources on the web with no responses. Then I decided to email the teacher of one of the classes I used for my international blog post and Volia! It worked! The teacher emailed me back the next day.
I first spoke with my contact, Mrs. Kathy Cassidy, through email but at her suggestion (she thought I should stretch myself), we had a conversation on Skype. I had never used Skype before but I installed it on my computer and we chatted that same night. It is similar to any other instant messenger like Google talk or Yahoo chat. We chatted for about 40 minutes about what I needed and what she is doing in her class using technology.
Mrs. Cassidy teaches a class of six year olds (first grade) in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. I originally found Mrs. Cassidy's class blog while doing a Google search for international blogs and hers popped up. She has been using blogs in her class for about four years now. She told me that when she had been thinking for a while that she wanted to teach her class to blog. She set it up and one day told them, "Guess what? You get to blog". The children really seem to have taken to it. They type the blogs entries themselves and if needed, Mrs. Cassidy translates what they have written. Usually though, you can tell what they are trying to say. Each child in the class has his or her own blog and posts to it frequently (at least once a week). I like to visit the blog once in a while to see what they have written. In their last post, they told what they were going to be for Halloween. The children keep a keen eye on their blogs to see how many people read them and leave comments. Kathy said the children love an audience. They are just like the rest of us in that respect.
One thing that Mrs. Cassidy told me that was surprising is that in Canada, the school curriculum doesn't encourage reading and writing in the Kindergarten unless the children are "ready" for it, unlike the United States. Most of her children couldn't read or write when they entered her class but I think their blog posts are amazingly well written considering they are just learning how.
The best part of the blog assignment is that since the children are doing their own writing, by the end of the school year, they have an online writing portfolio. The teacher, student and parent can look at it and see how much the child has improved over the course of the year
Mrs. Cassidy also uses videos in her classroom not only for teaching but to show the rest of the world what her students are doing in class. The videos of what the children are learning are posted to the class blog. The blog is frequently visited by parents and grandparents so the families get to see what the children are doing in school. Some of the videos are posted to you tube. It it a great way to connect their classroom to the outside world. I told Mrs. Cassidy about the podcasts we were making for class and she said she used to do podcasting in her classes but found that people would rather watch a video than listen to a podcast. Besides, half the charm of the video is seeing the small children's expressions and gestures. Some of that would be lost on just an audio device.
Mrs. Cassidy has been teaching for 18 years so I consider her a pro. I asked her for some suggestions for resources for someone, like myself, who is new at using technology in the classroom. She said if she were just starting out teaching, she would make a website on a wiki. Wikispaces is always giving away free wikis without ads to educators. She said creating a wiki is just like editing a word document. You can make the wiki public, where anyone can add to it or you can choose to have it protected so that no one can edit it but you. I think to start out, I would choose to keep it under my control until I learned what I was doing.
I enjoyed chatting with Kathy and appreciated all her input. She gave me some great ideas to start off with. When I eventually get in the classroom, I would like to try some of her suggestions. She said the best way to learn to use the technology is not to be afraid to try new things. Her best suggestion to me was "You just have to jump in and do it".
Mrs. Cassidy also has a terrific webpage. Click the maple leaf to visit the class website.
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