Dan's Tech Blog

In our last ECMP class we had the pleasure of hearing from three guest speakers: Darren Kuropotwa, Kathy Cassidy, and Clarence Fisher.  Here’s what they had to say:

Darren Kuropotwa: Talked a lot about the “power of information”.  His students provided an example of this; he posted their work online and demonstrated how the quality of their work drastically improved. What Darren also mentioned was the use of scribe posting.  Being reflective of one’s work is vitally important for academic growth and success, and scribe posting is a great way of getting students to become reflective and comfortable with voicing their thoughts.

Kathy Cassidy: She spoke about blogs and “Online Learning Portfolios”. What she does is upload an audio onto her blog of her students’ reading, pictures of them, and some of their works. This is a great way of not only allowing the parents of becoming more aware of what their child is doing in school, but helps the parents have a closer role in the education of their child. Kathy also has a Wiki called “Alphabetantics”, which she uses as an area to post videos of her students learning the alphabet. She also presented some very important statements, one being: “Students need to learn in balance”. An example of this is how students need to learn how to use a pencil and paper, but also need online skills.  As she said, “It’s not safe for kids not to be online”.  I agree with Kathy in how we need to teach students when they’re young how to safely find information online.  Besides this, Kathy also is very great at adapting and introducing new things.  One thing that caught my eye is how she introduced Skype to her grade ones by inviting a geologist to “skype in” and answer her students’ questions. That’s pretty neat and I can imagine how the class must have loved that.

Clarence Fisher: Raised a great point – a very insightful point: What does it mean to be “literate” in today’s society?” I think this is a very important question to ask.  Things are changing so rapidly, and this in turn results in the need to view literacy in a different light.  As Clarence said, networking and the sharing of information leads to success, or, an increased rate of success.  It’s important to recognize this change in literacy, but I liked his second question: “How do we educate kids to see literacy in a different way?” It’s very difficult to adapt ourselves to this new form, let alone teach it. But clearly we have to find a way that efficiently educates students into becoming literate in today’s technological world.

Overall great presentations.  I really enjoyed them.

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