Kathy Cassidy is a grade one teacher for Prairie South Schools in Moose Jaw, SK, Canada. She is also the author of the book titled Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades.
The first blog post I read of Mrs. Cassidy's was titled "Three Options for Independent Reading on the iPad." In this post she talked about how teachers are constantly looking for quality reading alternatives for their students. There are 3 great options she found. The first is called Epic Books. Epic! is an app and ebook subscription service that offers children great quality books by well known authors. Children can instantly access what they want to read rather than purchasing or downloading the books. The second option is called Unite for Literacy. Unite for Literacy is a website that has many books for beginning readers. Students can also listen to a book on this site while they read along. And the third option is the Kindle app. Children can read and listen to books through this app. Some of the books are also interactive. While most books have to be paid for, occasionally a good children's book will turn up on the one hundred free books list. I commented that I enjoyed reading her post and I'm looking forward to reading more from her blog! I had never heard of Epic! or Unite for Literacy before. It is exciting to learn about these types of resources that I will be able to use in my future classroom!
The second blog of Mrs. Cassidy's that I read was called "Listening to Reading in a One iPad Classroom." In this post Mrs. Cassidy mentions that one question she is frequently asked when speaking about using iPads in a classroom, is how it would work if only one iPad was available in a class. Even though in her class each student has an iPad, Mrs. Cassidy will sometimes use Apple TV to project her iPad on a big screen so all the students can see it. Another device she uses is called a Belkin Rockstar. You can plug this device into an iPad and it then allows up to five headphones to plug in and listen at the same time. This blog post really stood out to me because I had always wondered how one could best use a limited number of iPads in a room full of students. I have known of little devices that would allow two listeners at once but I have never seen anything that allows as many listeners as the Belkin Rockstar. I can use this in my future classroom as well as with my boys at home. Very Cool!
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