Personal Learning Space

I really gained a great deal from watching Kathy Cassidy’s grade 1 class on Youtube. She was very honest with the ways in which using computers and technology are useful. Kathy Cassidy believed that technology really helped the children share their ideas and questions and helped them learn together.

 I am just amazed at how confident these grade 1 children are in using weblogs and wiki’s. They use these programs like they would use pen and paper which is just incredible.

I was encouraged in hearing that Kathy Cassidy is not a technology person, however is keen to allow the children to use it as they are so excited and they find it so rewarding.

It was evident in watching this, that the parents of these students are so impressed and that they love being able to check what their children are doing at school, any time of the day!

Writing for a wider audience is such a fantastic idea and I believe it should be used in the classroom and that classrooms around the world should partner together as it is evident that children learn so much about other cultures and places by doing so.

Today is our first lesson of ‘Current Issues and Applications in Educational Computing’. We did a mind map of why it is useful to use the internet in the classroom. I worked with a partner as his computer wasn’t working and this is what we came up with:

Today we used GarageBand to make a podcast. We were asked last night to write a half page script, record it using the microphone on the computer and add a jingle. We then saved them to UTS online and showcased them to the class. I found it very enjoyable and quite an easy program to become familiar with. I chose to talk about my great passion. My great passion as explained in the podcast is to travel more of the world. To visit more of Europe and to potentially travel to Africa.

This program something that children can get a handle of in a short amount of time. Children would love to use this, in order to express their ideas and to have the opportunity to post it online for others to view. As discussed in class it is so important to have a celebration showcase for children to share their work with others.

I like the idea of being able to reply to each others podcasts via another podcast and feel that this will be very useful within the classroom that children will definitely get involved in.

Have a look at my podcast!

    amyspodcast.mp3