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"Kathy Cassidy has been a pioneer  leading the way with student digital portfolios. In this episode, she discusses how she gets her grade one students to create digital portfolios using edublogs. This practical EduSlam will help you get started on using Student Digital Portfolios with your students! "

Great app shares by @kathycassidy to support primary literacy

"One of the most often asked questions these days seems to be "what are some good apps?" This is such a difficult question to answer, because the answer depends on the question "what do you want an app to do?""

"When I speak about using iPads in a primary school classroom, I am often asked about how it would work if I only had one iPad as is the case in many classrooms. This post is the first of what I hope will be several with suggestions as to how to make that work effectively."

"Those of you who live and teach in northern climes know what winter is all about. It's not about the beauty of the fluffy white stuff or the bone-chilling temperatures or even the short sunlight hours each day. In a primary classroom, it is really all about the snow clothes. Assuming that the temperature is warm enough to actually go outside (in my school division the children go outside unless the temperature-including wind chill-is below -28C), the whole putting on/taking off all those snow clothes takes up a LOT of time. For some students, it is a ten-minute process. And when you consider that it has to be done first thing in the morning, before and after two recesses, at lunch time and again at the end of the day…well, you can see a lot of time needs to go into this every day."

"In my teaching career as an educator, no change in curriculum, program or teaching philosophy (and believe me, there have been a lot) has had the impact on my teaching that connecting my classroom has.  Using social media tools to connect my students with people and classrooms from across North America and far beyond has helped my children to achieve curriculum outcomes, to learn how to act safely and appropriately online and to learn an appreciation for the similarities and differences between people. Not only do we learn from and with these other people, the students have a chance to become teachers themselves."

"For many years, I have sent a letter to my soon to be students near the end of the summer. I do this to ease any anxiety some of them may have, to help them feel part of the class before they arrive and because…well…it's a letter. Children do not receive letters very often, so print written just to them is significant. It's a literacy thing."

"Ten years ago this month, my six-year-old students and I first dipped our toes into the water of blogging. At the time, I really had no idea what would come of this new venture, no idea of the conversations we would have, no idea of the connections we would be able to make with people beyond the doors of our classroom and no idea of the often serendipitous learning that would take place."

"In my classroom, each of my grade one and grade two students has their own blog. These blogs also serve as digital portfolios. Throughout the school year, the children post artifacts of their learning from all subject areas, including writing samples, podcasts of reading fluency,photos of artwork, explanations of mathematics concepts and videos that summarize their learning in science, health and social studies. (Note: The videos linked to in this blog post work best when played through Google Chrome.)"

"Why My Six-Year-Old Students Have Digital Portfolios"

"Recently, I was given the opportunity to go one-to-one in my first grade classroom with iPads. To say that my students and I were excited to do this would be a bit of an understatement. It has long been a dream of mine to go one-to-one and for the students it is, as they say, like kids in a candy shop. With Great Tools Comes Great Responsibility"

"Last month, someone who works at a school in Milan, Italy contacted me. She wondered if I would be interested in connecting with a first grade classroom at her school to do something similar. Since the time change between our locations does not allow for synchronous conversation, we decided to play the game on Twitter using the hashtag #guessmynumber."

"My students create many different artifacts, but the most meaningful are those in which my students show their learning and their thinking in ways that are far beyond what a worksheet could do. When they make a video or screencast of what they have learned, I can hear and see their thinking. I can also hear confidence or hesitation, self-corrections or errors in perception. Consider these math examples produced by my students."

"I talk and share what I do with a lots of teachers. When these educators hear about the ways their colleagues are using blogs and Twitter in their classrooms they are intrigued. Most of them are interested enough to want to look further, but the idea is a bit overwhelming. I find this to be especially true of primary teachers. "What would that look like with young children?" they wonder. "What do the different blogging tools look like if you teach six year olds?" "How could you use Twitter in a kindergarten classroom?" "Yes, I can see what that would look like with older students, but my students are young. Most of them can't yet write. What would THAT look li"

"I've heard a lot about Mystery Skype calls over the past few years. If you're not familiar with this term, the basic idea is that two classrooms chat via Skype and try to guess where the other class is from by answering questions with only yes or no answers. I've always thought this would be lots of fun, but it has always seemed out of the reach of my six year olds, many of whom are still struggling to realize that they live in both a city AND a province. Answering questions about our location would be out of the question. "

Kathy Cassidy's handouts from her session at the MTS Awakening Possibilities 2014 conference.