Primary Preoccupation has been developed by a grade one teacher, Kathy Cassidy. This week her classroom developed a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) day. This day was very successful and based on her children's enthusiasm, she knew that they would have to do it again. Mrs. Cassidy, mentioned that one half to two thirds of her class has a nintendo DS. I'll have to admit, I had know idea that this device supported educational apps. Four of my nieces and nephews own a nintendo ds. I ignorantly assumed that all you could do with it is play video games. Fifteen or so years ago the first handheld nintendo, was predominantly video games. I don't recall ever seeing an educational game for it. As hard as it is to admit, nintendo and other gaming brands, are trying to educate our children's future.
Mrs. Cassidy's students were each able to use their own DS, log into a private chatroom, and learn spelling or math lessons. Over all this experiment has been a success and tunes in to student's hobbies. This increases interest and, I would say, improves understanding of the concept.
One lucky teacher in Canada, Ms. Kathy Cassidy recently won a $20,000 spending spree from Best Buy! The contest was for her to purchase technology for the classroom. In doing so, she purchased iPads for every student in the class. Now, I don't no about you, but being 1:1 with any device, let alone an iPad, is a huge deal. This grade one teacher in Canada already had a few apps for the students to learn. One of them being Letter Reflex. This apps allows students having difficulties with the letters such as b's and d's or p's and q's another form of interactive practice. They also learned how to take pictures for a special project that they are doing with another class. Ms. Cassidy commented that her favorite comment from the day was "I guess we really like the iPads". I would say that is a definite understatement.
No comments:
Post a Comment