Hey everyone! I'm starting this blog as part of a class I'm taking from Valley City State University. Hopefully, you find something useful in here that helps you become a better teacher or I learn something from you (feel free to leave comments). Since this is my first post, I thought I'd talk a little bit about technology and the direction my teaching career is heading.
I love to use technology in the classroom. The problem is, my current job is as a PE teacher. I graduated with a degree in Social Studies Education from MSU-Moorhead but I'm currently teaching PE until something in the Social Studies department opens up at my school. Our PE program is evolving right now and part of my job is to find a way to incorporate technology into the program. I've thought about using heartrate monitors, websites such as www.mapmyfitness.com, www.fitday.com and even Wii Fit. The problem is, we only meet 2 days a week for 45min. How can I incorporate these things and make my class worthwile and smooth flowing? Those are some of the answers I hope to achieve this summer. Each week, I will be blogging about trends/ideas dealing with PE and technology. If you come across any articles dealing with Physical Education and Technology or online PE courses, please pass them my way.
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I can feel your pain when comes to technology integration into special area classes such as Physical Education. I am an elementary music teacher and I try to interrogate as much technology into my lessons as well. My problem is that the school I teach at does not have a vast amount of technological resources at our disposal. If I want to use the projector for a PowerPoint presentation I have to borrow the one projector the school owns and carry upstairs to the stage where my music classes are held. It sounds like you do not have that problem of having the technology but you struggle with the time and choosing programs to integrate into your class. I can personally vouch for the Wii Fit because I have one and I love the fitness features it offers me. It makes fitness into a video game that children are very familiar with and will excel at. If your goal is to teach your children about fitness, programs like the Wii Fit should a line very nicely into your class.
ReplyDeleteJeffrey, I think I have a couple of possibilities. It seems as if every discipline could use some technology and the challenge is up to us to come with the proper forms. There are lots of websites out there for students to keep track of their nutrition. They could monitor what they eat, mealtimes, and other assorted facts about their diet. Speaking from experience, it is very eye opening to see the raw data about what you are actually ingesting. The same could be done for exercise. I know I don’t have to tell you students from this generation are some of the most sedentary in American history. They just don’t go out and play or throw the ball around anymore. Many sites give things for young people to do outdoor. http://www.nflrush.com/ is a good one that uses the popularity of professional football as momentum. I subscribe to Men’s Health magazine. Workouts from the website http://www.menshealth.com can be downloaded to an iPod, cell phone etc. Students can get hands-on demonstration of how to work out. These may be more individualized examples but fitness is definitely going high tech. Thanks, Arek
ReplyDeleteWe have something in common. I taught k-2 Phy. Ed the last three years in addition to kindergarten (PT) and Title I math. I know there are many government sites that emphasize the use of technology and learning about nutrition etc... There are quite a few math websites that take integrate sporting events/rules of games with math concepts as well. Have you ever heard of PE central? This is a great lesson plan bank for quick and fun educational physical education activities! Also Pete's PowerPoint Station has excellent PowerPoints (developed by students) dealing with health and nutrition issues. Students might be motivated to capture the content if they know their work will be viewed by others than their teacher! www.pecentral.org and www.pppst.com
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ReplyDeleteJeff, I think there is couple of things you could do to help integrate technology into phy ed. One of them which seem a little corny is to possible use things such as the Dance Dance Revolution and the Wii Fit. At our school we have integrated that into a section of the phy ed class our 7th 8th and 9th graders have to do. It give kids and opportunity to do something that is fit, but also measures how much aerobic activity each student is getting from their workout. You could graph each student’s workout for two weeks on a computer and go through it at the end of the 2 weeks. This would allow you to show the gains and maybe loses each student might have. Another thing is maybe using the same graphs as you had their and measure each students performance on their weekly workouts on other lessons. You are just using a computer, but it is helping students understand what they need to work on and what they already do well.
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