Post #9

Watching how Ms. Cassidy runs her class was very interesting. Her use of Skype to connect her students with other students that are commenting on her class' blog is en especially inspiring idea to me. This is because although they are already communicating and learning about and from one another online, I love her idea to allow the students to meet and interact in a way that is a on a more personal interface. She also makes it clear that staying up to date with technology is an unavoidable asset given that it is an enormous part of kids' lives today, and it is essential for teachers to know what their students know in order to better relate to them and to use it as an opportunity to help them learn.

On the subject of Twitter. I am not a fan! I have been trying to improve my use of twitter, but I my patience is constantly being tried when I am being limited to so few "characters" to express myself. I am all for little blurbs of thought and I understand how it can be useful to post a question and be answered through messaging. However as she does mention in her video, there are message boards and pages of that nature where perhaps the more long-winded teachers, such as myself, can feel more at home and have productive exchange of thought.

The two student questions that I was was most concerned and interested in were the ones on plagiarism and the option to have a class Facebook page.

One major concern of mine as a future high school English teacher is indeed plagiarism. English is especially easy to steal work from others and make it look like your own, given that the students are usually asked to write papers to be turned in and graded. This problem actually has been very much curbed with internet sites such as Turnitin.com. Since high school English students will be working on their grammar and writing abilities, this will be a useful incorporation of technology into the classroom. The issue of plagiarism lies more on the projects they will be turning in. A media project is very easy to mimic or completely rip off if it obscure enough or simply made the same way. Although it is alright for students to be inspired by others, these media projects can also be made by students that have not learned or read the material at all. This worries me as an English teacher because this can be very tempting (especially for high school students) and the literature is still the core of high school English.

One idea from the students that I loved was he use of Facebook as an interactive tool. Most students already use Facebook and are actually quite fluent on how to upload video, pictures, comments and questions to it already. I believe that if I set up a page for my class it would be an excellent hub of communication for my students. This is because this age group of students are already checking their own accounts daily anyway so they will not be going too far out of their way to visit the class page, or notice notifications about it. I really like this idea because the students are already so familiar with Facebook and it is incredibly user friendly. I plan on incorporating many other aspects of technology into my classroom, but I am very glad that I heard this as a suggestion!