It is time to look back at my game plan and take note of what I have done and what I would like to do in the future to include NETS-T standards in what I teach. For now I am focused on the NETS-T first standard, Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity. This standard states that teachers should promote, support and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness. It also touches on engaging students in real-world issues and problem solving on the website http://www.iste.org/. Having students create fitness plans to meet their individual needs is a great activity to meet this standard. By educating students about the benefits of physical fitness and the increasing number of inactive youth, this lesson could be turned into a real life problem solving activity. Tracking progress through the use of heart rate monitors (HRM), pedometers, and spread sheet software ties technology into the lesson well. As far as meeting this goal, I feel very comfortable in how I will incorporate what I have learned in what I teach.
My second goal has changed. I wanted to learn more about digital responsibility and citizenship, but I don't really see this becoming an integral part of what I teach. My shift takes me to NETS-T standard 2, Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessment. As I continue to learn of new tools and software that could help students awareness of physical education I will look for ways to get them into lessons that I teach. I feel like technology has become a way to reach students who have not taken an interest in p.e. to this point. P.E. class should be something that students look forward to every day. The anxiety that many students have about physical activity can be reduced by meeting the need of individuals, and technology has made that task more of a reality than before. Tools such as fitness social networks provide support and feedback from individuals of the same background. One website that I have found that shows promise is http://www.meckids.com/. Another software program that gives information about individual fitness is Cooper Institute Fitnessgram (thanks John). This program gives comparisons to other students of the same age from around the country, and helps student set achievable goals based on their current fitness levels. The software also provides several assessments for students, which is another variable in the NETS-T content standards.
References:
National Education Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T) located at www.iste.org
The Cooper Institute, (2010) Fitnessgram. Retreived October 11, 2010 from www.cooperinstitute.org.
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I think it is great you are looking for a way to incorporate the standards presently and also in the future! It is really neat there are internet sites you can use for physical education. I bet your students will really like the use of technology in gym!
ReplyDeleteJosh,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading your posts week after week because I have seen you grow personally and professionally. After viewing this week’s video I am interested to know how you plan to use social networking and collaborative tools in your physical education class.
Josh,
ReplyDeleteI am a big supporter of your goal to make our children more aware of their physical fitness and taking more responsibility for their health. It's heartbreaking to see so many of our children suffer from obesity. I'm wondering if there is a way to extend this goal out to the parents as well. Our school is having a fitness night this coming week. The overall goal of it is to educate our families on how to make healthy choices and fun/easy ways to make that shift. It just might be interesting to see the results of those students whose parents are on board too. I think as far as the social networking piece goes you really have a lot of opportunity there for you. Great Ideas, Josh.
Josh,
ReplyDeleteI can see in your posts week after week how well you are able to connect to what we are learning in this program and really "connections" is what makes learning true and authentic. You made a wise choice of changing your second goal because it is true that in your type of teaching digital ethics is not realy going to come into play because you are probably only going to use softwares or your students will use software without really manipulating technology. You are doing a great job of helping our kids with not only raising the awareness for physical fitness but also supplementing it with technology and making it more interesting.
Noreen
Josh, last week I left a post on your blog that I thought could be helpful to you, I don't know if you got a chance to read it or not. I posted it kind of late. I thought I'd share it again:
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).
They 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.