Last week I began to take action to make the goals that I had set for myself a reality. I conducted research among p.e. teachers in my district, and online. I found many options to integrate technology into my classroom/gym that can and will enhance learning by incorporating goal setting activities and creative new ideas that should spark the interest of all students. Technology also allows to tailor activities in order to specify the needs of students of all body types and lifestyles. As far as, my comfort level in the area of digital citizenship and responsibility, I feel good about what I have learned. For the most part the thing that will affect my classroom most is the proper use and citation of resources.
My main focus from here is going to be incorporating technology into several different lessons. I do not want to narrow down the use of technology to one or two units. What I would really like to do is use technology somehow in most, if not all, of the units that I teach. Since my district has limited amounts of heart rate monitors (HMR) those will probably be distributed to a different group of students in each unit. If I am to accomplish this I will have to find more technology to use in different areas. I did find some toys to use in the Laureate text Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use. Cennamo, Ross, and Ertmer suggest great tools like bioelectrical impedance devices that are used to determine body fat percentage (2009). This tool could be useful in that it takes much less time than calipers, and it is much less intrusive for the person being tested. Another suggestion in the the text is geocaching. "Geocaching uses treasures-the cache- that can be located anywhere in the world" (Cennamo, 2009) through the use of the Internet and GPS devices. After reading about this activity, I actually found a group in my town that does geocaching. This could be a great way to get out of the gym and try something new.
References:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J., Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA. Wadsworth, Cenage Learning.
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Josh,
ReplyDeleteI think out of everyone in our group you have learned the most about different ways to integrate technology. It sounds like you have some really great ideas, and I hope you find them successful. Maybe you can ask your school district to purchase a couple of more heart rate monitors each year or you could look into applying for a grant.
Josh,
ReplyDeleteI am impressed the way you want to intergrate technology in your PE classes and the idea of using the online software for the geocaching is great. During your evaluation of the game plan, did you find a scale to measure your success in implemntation of your goals or do you monitor ut by the interest of our students in this particular lesson?
Josh - nice way to integrate technology into the classroom by using geocaching. That's a really innovative way to approach this - I wouldn't have thought of that!!! I've had a little bit of experience with it, and I think it's really cool.
ReplyDeleteThank you all for the positive comments. I will be monitoring success through fit charts, which are graphs or charts created by the Polar Heart Rate Monitors. These graphs can show individual or progress, as well as, group progress. Elementary teachers have begun to dothis in order to show fitness level improvements in elementary age children.
ReplyDeleteI think that is great you want to incorporate a lot of technology. I think this should be a whole new way to teach... and we should basically use technology all the time! If we just use technology here and there, it would be okay, but I feel our students would benefit most if we used it a lot, just as you stated! I think I incorporate technology at least 4 out of the 5 days I teach.
ReplyDeleteJosh, I talked to a buddy of mine over the weekend who became the health teacher at our local middle school 2 years ago. He was pretty much given free reign to do whatever he wanted. He decided to get them up out of there seats. He takes them to the school fitness center and out on the track. Then he uses a software called Cooper Institute Fitness Gram. It measures students fitness in strength, cardio-vascular, endurance, and body fat (BMI).
ReplyDeleteThey get a read out on this program compared to other students there age.
Finally the software will give them suggestions on how to improve their fitness. An example is - if their cardio-vascular is really good they may need to improve their strength.
After reading your post I thought you might like to hear there is technology out there that can help.