Brittany3eryn’s Weblog

About two weeks ago we had three guest speakers come and talk to our class about how they use technology in the classroom and issues they have faced. First we heard from Darren Kuropatwa, a calculus teacher who uses technology to help his students teach themselves and others. I really liked that he allowed his students to share so much of their knowledge to help each other out. Not everybody can see one example and do the rest of the questions without discussion. I know in my calculus class, it really would have helped me if I would visually been able to see more questions be done and talk to other students so we could learn together. I was really inspired at all the ways he uses technology in his classroom, his students are getting a fuller educational experience because he is exposing them to new theories on learning and teaching. Our second guest speaker was Kathy Cassidy from Moose Jaw. She teaches grade one and has every student in her classroom using a blog. What I took away from her presentation was that in order to gain the cooperation you need from parents you need to explain why your doing the blog and how you will protect their children. I was really happy she talked about how she keeps her students safe on the internet because if you don’t have a plan to tell parents, I don’t think the cooperation levels would be as high as she has in her room. Our final speaker was Clarence Fisher from Manitoba. He teaches middle years and had a very unique idea about how education best works in his classroom. He has a very comfortable room that all his students would love to come to. My favorite part about his talk was that he allows the education that his students learn every year to build upon itself so that students are not starting from scratch and they can learn more and dig deeper every year. I really liked this new take on education because most times as students we are expected each year to start fresh and learn from ourselves, but imagine how much more we could learn if we were building upon previous information. I was really struck by his teaching philosophy and I think it would be something I would like to try when or if I am ever in a middle or high school classroom.