Check out our Multi-Cultural Games Unit

We are finally ready to launch our multicultural games website!

What is it all about?

The website is based around a wiki platform to create collaboration with other schools around the world. The main purpose of the site is to build a resource of international games that is simple to use and accessible for students from all over the globe with an internet connection.

Kerry Dyke and I want to show case the best student work that we can find from schools interested in collaborating in this project. The hope is that students can get a better understanding of what sport and recreation looks like in different cultures. We believe this will foster global citizenship and help incorporate technology in PE.

What do student's learn?

Well it is best to let them tell you. Here are a few thoughts from some of our grade seven students who took part of the unit.



To find more about this project go to our multicultural games website and think about how you can add this to your curriculum.

Taking our Multicultural Games to a new level...

Kerry Dyke and I taught our Multicultural Games unit last semester and we decided to take it one step further recently by creating a wiki which contains the best student work from within our classes. Our goal is to share this unit with other schools around the world, by letting you try it and to see if you can contribute your best games to this wiki in order to create a great resource for PE teachers all over the globe, hence creating global collaboration between teachers and students.

If you want to find out more about this unit we teach to our grade seven students have a look at an older post of mine which I wrote when we started planning out this unit, or check out the unit plan. We are also about to launch the wiki which is in the final development stage, so watch out for a blog post in the next week or two guiding you to this wiki.

Here's a little video of us working with our top students from the unit. We did this after school and they finished off their work for homework. This was a great chance for them to refine their tech skills, get extra credit for the extra effort outside of the classroom and for them to gain recognition for the great work they've done. We hope you enjoy!

Photo Orienteering...

If you are looking for a great blog to read as a PE teacher trying to integrate technology then you will enjoy reading Jarrod Robinson's blog, 'Mr Robbo the PE Geek'. Jarrod is an Aussie PE teacher who offers some fantastic ideas on integrating technology into Physical Education lessons (have a look at his ACHPER conference presentation for some great ideas). One of his posts last year was geared around using QR coding in orienteering, which made me think of an even simpler way of using technology in orienteering... Photo Orienteering.

One of the things we are faced with while teaching middle school Physical Education at ISB are short PE lessons. This means that we don't have much time to teach tools such as QR coding. In reality, we want to maximise our activity time to ensure kids are moving. So instead of using QR codes we decided to create photo orienteering. The idea behind photo orienteering is that there are no clips or code to find, instead the students just have to take an enlarged photo of a photo clue given with a map, thereby matching photo clues to map locations. Almost all our students have camera's on their cell phones so there is little or no need to supply any camera and once set up this is a very easy lesson to administer.

Here's how it works...

We give the students a double sided laminated page, one side containing small numbered picture clues and the other side containing a google image with circles showing where the different pictures were taken. The pictures are small cropped pictures from a larger picture taken at the site, here's an example of some of the picture clues:

Here's an example of from a section of the map...

The students are instructed to go to one of the circles on the map and see if they can find one of the cropped pictures in the area of the circle. When they match the cropped photo with the circle, then they need to take an enlarged photo of the area to verify they actually went to the location, here's an example for letter C, which matches with photo clue number 16:


The Orienteering is easy to administer, the checking at the end is easy with all the answers being shown on a looping PowerPoint so students can check off their photos to answers, scoring themselves on the total number of images they were able to find.

Please email me if you need any more information on administering this.

Google Forms does it again!

We recently had our Middle School Olympics; a whole day event for all 450 of our middle school students which started with an Olympic ceremony first thing in the morning followed by the three rotations (track and field, team sports & team challenges) and culminated in a tug of war competition. Although I wondered if it was worth the enormous amount of time in terms of organization, the response from the students at the end of the day makes me firmly believe it was worth every second of time we put in.

In the past we have always kept team scores (all the students are placed in four even teams) during the day by having a number of runners bringing the scores from all the events to three staff members collating scores, adding with calculators, entering into sheets, adding, counting, adding counting... until finally we managed to come up with a final sum for the day and let everyone know which team won.

This year we wanted to streamline the points gathering process and turn it into a real-time event, so again I used a Google form to achieve this. We realized we didn't care about keeping clear records of what event scored what with regards to the amounts of points (although there were clear guidelines for each person at each event so the points were even). The main aim was to get a running total during the day and have kids seeing it, instead of having them all wait till the end of the day for when we produced this ridiculously detailed document about all the scores for every event... basically we were turning the points into a formative assessment of their teams efforts instead of a summative assessment!

Here's how we achieved it:

1. I created a Google Form for gathering the four colors scores at each event.
2. I entered some fake scores into the sheet and submitted it to test it. I then entered an extra line above the fake scores and put in the 'sum formula' for each column (e.g. =SUM(B3:B9999) to sum column B)
3. I then created a second sheet on the form. In this sheet I created a table which collates the sum from each color's column from sheet one (e.g. the formula for column B is: =Sheet1!B2), this provided us with a running score.
4. We used an LCD projector and a mac laptop to project this. We also ensured the laptop was hidden from the students.
5. We zoomed in on the table so that the LCD projector only displayed the table (use two fingers and control on a mac to zoom in on your screen). Final product and final score...
6. Enter data into the Google form and you have an instant live score.

The really groovy thing about this was that we used a variety of ways to enter the scores. One group of teachers at the track were entering the scores on a laptop which was picking up the wireless signal. Another teacher was using her iphone, I was using my Nokia phone using my web browser and I also used a desktop when I dropped into the office. What happened is that students could always see the scores, always see them changing and hence there was huge excitement and motivation to go harder during the day.

It was so simple, so efficient and so effective. A great example of Technology really being useful within a sports day.

Digital Natives... Digital Nomads... Multi-technoral

So I have been bugged for a while with the term 'digital natives' and finally I am bugged enough to write about it. I keep on hearing this term bashed around suggesting all our kids are digital natives, therefore it is ok just to launch technology at them and they will deal with it. This term comes cloaked in sayings like; 'the kids know more than us', 'just give it to them and they'll work it out faster than us'... the list goes on. What it looks like is teachers throwing technology at kids and expecting them to use it without enough guidance (I am guilty also).

The reality I see is that this is a facade. The whole idea of digital natives is a load of trash. Our kids grow up in a digital age, but many are not 'natives' in the true sense. The term 'native' points to an individual who has a handle on the things in their environment, they can use the surroundings and survive fine. A jungle native can use all the jungle and live effectively within.
What I have seen is that our kids aren't digital natives, they are digital nomads, nomads in the sense that their environment is always changing due to developments around them and their digital desires which shift them like the sand in the desert.

This environment is also a multi-technoral (a made up word I have created equivalent to 'multicultural') environment, as within it there are many tech languages. Each kid is entering this multi-technoral environment with different digital languages, some speak games, others text, some program, others talk facebook, a few type and the list goes on. The reality is there are many digital languages that they don't have a handle on.

So as a teacher my concern is we often throw them into this environment and expect them to survive, however the reality is that we need to ensure they speak the digital language we are using. We can't assume we have digital natives, we can assume we have a multi-technoral class with many different languages. It is our job to ascertain which digital languages are spoken and to ensure we are multi-techno-linugal in our teaching so we can speak, teach and engage all our kids.

Thoughts?

Our multicultural Games Unit...

Kerry Dyke, our fellow Middle School teacher has been implementing a great unit on Multicultural games for a number of years here at International School Bangkok. I have teamed up with him and we now have re-vamped and improved the unit.

Here's how the project is going to work...

1. Students work alone, in pairs or three's.
2. They research a physically active game unique to their or another culture.
   
3. They will write a blog post which explains the game, includes pictures and the basic rules of the game and explains the games unique features relevant to their culture.
   
4. They also plan a short teaching lesson which they deliver to their peers. The class is divided into small groups to make the teaching itself less daunting.
5. Students will then deliver this lesson to their peers. The lesson is recorded on the flip camera
   
6. Students will be expected to work with the recorded video to create a 1-3 minute video which assists explaining the game and shows them teaching. This will be uploaded to You Tube and embedded into their blog page.
   
7. The final part of the assessment requires them to reflect on the process writing a blog post about it.
   

Check it out here

Flip Cameras... making life easy and hard!

Kerry and I have been implementing our multicultural games unit which involves students presenting games from their own culture, being filmed doing so, creating a blog post about this and then uploading a video of their game to their school blog (I will blog more about this later).

This has been a fantastic unit and has provided an opportunity for me to fine tune some basics about using flip cameras and dealing with the other hardware to ensure that the images to students.

Here are a bunch of hints...

1. If you want good footage, film it yourself, or spend time teaching the students how to video and give them a chance to practice (not the greatest for ensuring lots of activity time in PE)
   
2. Once you film a child get the footage off the camera ASAP, label it and keep the video files in separate folders which you can pass on to the students. Don't import into iphoto... it isn't easy to work with iphoto with the movie files
   
3. When you download the files from onto your laptop don't delete them via your computer. You need to delete from the camera itself. If you delete via the computer you end up sending the files to a 'hidden file' on the camera itself, which doesn't free up space for more videos on the flip camera. Delete on the camera.
   
4. Once you have footage downloaded from the computer, encourage students to get it ASAP, or write it to a DVD/CD (watch the size). Ideally encourage kids to buy a 4gb or larger flash drive so that they can get the footage (flip cameras film in HD so the files can be huge)
   
5. Ensure you always have spare batteries for any flip cameras.
6. Back up

The flip camera a fantastic technology which is really easy to use and fantastic for quick filming with good resolution and frame capture speed. It allows kids to have instant feedback on their performance and has multitudes of uses in PE

Laptops in PE... Useful or time wasters...

I have been blogging a bit about IT saving our time and I think it is important to review this in the light of effective use of computers in PE. I know what some PE teachers are already thinking... do computers even have a place in PE? in my mind there is no doubt they do, however only if they are providing further reinforcement to what is happening in the lesson, or if they save the time of the teacher, which may provide for better learning opportunities.

Today we finished our fitness testing and we have used the same process that we used in August where we used googledocs spreadsheets to create a form for students to submit their data from their fitness testing into a common spreadsheet, which could later be separated by class, teacher and grade and uploaded if necessary into student reports. This process involved students entering their personal and fitness test data into a google form, which saved us enormous hours and saved a whole lesson for the kids.

Why laptops instead of desktop, simple... PE is mobile.

In order to achieve the most effective IT integration into PE, the devices and tools we need to use have to be incredibly mobile, resilient and easy to use. We don't want to take away activity time from students(moving to a computer lab etc...), so it is essential that we ensure our non-activity time is reduced. We have improved the process of collecting data from students from one or my earlier blog posts about google forms for fitness testing so that students now enter their details into the spreadsheet as they finish all their testing. This saves further time and frees us up to do greater learning in our PE classes.

The biggest problem we face as a PE department is charging laptops when they are being used all day. In this situation it is essential all teachers are aware of putting laptops to sleep to save battery time after they have been used, and to ensure that during lunch times students return the laptops to be charged. Once this pattern is established effective use of laptops can become possible. Here are some ideas of how we could use them in PE:

• Fitness testing via google forms
• Entering activity levels on my food pyramid tracker
• Using flip cameras and then downloading to allow for student to observe their technique.
  
• Laptops could be used to write reflections about units.
• Please make a comment on more ways that you see laptops being effective tools in our PE classrooms.

Happy laptop intetragration!

NETS... Effective?

When we look at the NETs for teachers and administrators and their overall effectiveness we have to ask ourselves, how relevant are these set's of standards for Teachers and Administrators to being a "Good Educator" in today's world? After all, if they are not relevant then the chance of them being achieved is minimal and their effectiveness is questionable.

There is little doubt that the NETs are full of great ideas and principles which enhance learning, however, I have to agree with Gabi (from our COETAIL course) that the NETs are not strictly technology related concepts and skills. Often the adoption of such broad technology standards are a way to justify or add 'weight' to our subject area. Dana, also from our COETAIL course suggests similar views that we are committing jargon overload by introducing yet another set of standards. So how effective are they going to be if people are already teaching the standards in other curriculum areas?

My question is, do tools really need standards? I think most would agree that technology is a tool, it is a means to an end, not an end to a means.

The moment an educator is using technology 'just to teach the skills' or just to make it more 'teched out' is a concern. As I have said in earlier posts, technology is there to save our time, not to consume our time (check out this blog post from kmc21...), or for a nice video from TeachersTV on how to use IT to save time... (sorry they won't let you embed this in a blog... rather ironic as that would save time for the viewer!). Tools enhance learning, so therefore any effective curriculum for technology needs to focus on how technology ENHANCES LEARNING... not just how to attach it to learning already occurring.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/51783679@N00/2333409688

We must make certain that we keep an eye on using technology as a learning enhancement tool, a tool that saves our time, freeing us up improve our teaching to therefore improve our learning.

Taking it to the next level... integrating IT in the classroom.

So how can teachers and schools ensure that their students are learning what they need when it comes to Technology and Information Literacy? Before we even ask this question, we have to ask what does a school want to achieve when it comes to Technology and Information Literacy?

There is clearly a continuum that schools lie upon from those which don't embrace technology to schools which fully immerse themselves in technology. Each of these schools will have different information technology aims, and therefore when we ask the question of ensuring students get what they need, we have to frame this in light of the schools philosophy. Schools which fall under national curricula requirements have their hands tied to some extent, however as can be seen in the NETS or the AASL Standards there is a lot of room for interpretation in terms of what level of technology is actually taught. Many of the standards are broad and could be easily integrated into other subjects without a firm focus on 21st century I.T. Skills

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7830713@N03/510785371

As my last post suggested, to not teach technology is to ignore the life world's our students exist in, this in turn potentially disconnects us and may hinder a positive learning relationship. So, long story short... schools need to teach IT, what depth they chose is situational. In order to achieve this integration into the classroom there are some key areas schools need to consider:

Curriculum

By adopting a formal curriculum for IT, schools have an agreed upon set of learning goals which they need to meet with each student. In many ways this is just a step to 'legitimise' the domain of IT, however statements can provide schools with the necessary lever to integrate technology and source funding.

Budget

Probably the biggest limiting factor on any school is the available budget as this will effect every other suggestion below.

Staffing

To ensure that curriculum goals are met it is vital to have strong IT leadership amongst a school and the appropriate support provided, both in terms of technical 'maintenance' support and specific IT learning related support. There are many models of IT learning related support from teacher leaders, IT support staff, IT coaches etc... what is important is that handing a tool to someone is useless unless the user knows how to use it most effectively. Trained, competent staff are critical to delivering a quality curriculum.

Internet connectivity

What one can achieve in a web 2.0 environment is now highly limited by web connectivity. Wireless options and general internet speed has to be sufficient so not to waste learning time.

Appropriate hardware & software choices

Budget and internet connectivity will have an enormous influence on hardware and software choices. In saying this schools can effectively use much shareware and web 2.0 tools, which reduces cost, software and even hardware in some cases.

Regular Professional learning opportunities

The opportunity for teachers to engage and be extended with technology is critical if technology aims are to be achieved. Learning opportunities need to be linked to the school's vision of technology and any curricula adopted. This ensures that staff have adequate opportunities to master skills required to be taught in the classroom.

When schools take a good hard look at the above areas for implementation of IT, then there is a greater chance of ensuring we impart the information literacy skills students need.

Who's job is it to teach Technology and Information Literacy?

So I am concerned, concerned that we are even asking this question. We started a new COETAIL course today so I'll have to answer it!

Let's be honest, technology is now so embedded in western society that it is in reality, quite impossible to escape it within education. Technology is here to stay and it will continue to expand and blow our minds by the advances it makes. If we chose to ignore technology as teachers we are turning a blind eye to the world that our students are growing up in and in fact, we are doing our student population a crime by not given them the skills necessary to succeed in a technologically driven economy and society. It is a disservice to not give our children an opportunity to master the skills needed to live in a such a society

The question that is raised is how do we teach these skills? One option is by creating a set of learning standards to ensure that all students are engaged in technology. The NETS are one example of a set of standards that can be adopted by schools. These standards are devised by the 'International Society for Technology in Education' (ISTE), which is actually an American based society (the 'N' in NETS represents 'National'... rather ironic considering it is an international society). The NETS are divided into key learning areas/strands/standards (depending on where you come from) as follows:

1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Communication and Collaboration
3. Research and Information Fluency
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
5. Digital Citizenship
6. Technology Operations and Concepts

As you can see from the above standards only the last two standards are overtly descriptive in their title as 'technology' focused (I use this term broadly). The first four standards are skills that I feel are embedded in other curricula areas within a school, it is only when you read the descriptors of standards 1-4 that there is a reference to these standards being taught through a 'technology focused environment' or using 'technology tools'.

Another set of standards that could be used for ensuring schools teach technology within their curriculum are the AASL standards (AASL: American Association of School Librarians). These are much broader (as they are primarily for librarians), but are also set out much more effectively as they are broken into Skills, Dispositions in Action, Responsibilities and Self-Assessment Strategies within the four standards:

1. Inquire, think critically and gain knowledge
2. Draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply to knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge
3. Share knowledge participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society
4. Pursue personal and aesthetic growth

Once again, many of the standards are very broad educational goals that many schools already include within their 'School Vision', 'ESLR's -Expected Schoolwide Learning Results', 'Essential Skills' or whatever the school policy is called which lays home to it's primary educational goals.

So, as many of the standards themselves are embedded in other curricula areas and school policy documents why do we even need a set of standards? Does the creation of a set of standards lead us to ask the question 'Who's job is it to teach IT'?

Personally I struggle with this and see an adoption of a 'set of standards' as another bunch of boxes to tick, another hoop to jump through. Let's just look at standard five from the NETS... 'Digital Citizenship'. In reality most schools in western society promote 'citizenship' or 'global citizenship' as an educational aim, which in a modern world one would now argue is inclusive of digital citizenship... the two are connected, not disconnected, or should I say more broadly, information is connected in our learning, not disconnected.

The teaching of Information technology is embedded in what we do, it cannot be separate, sure we need to teach the skill of a program to ensure the students are up to speed, just like we teach a science student 'how to use a microscope' or a PE student 'how to use a heart rate monitor'. The key is this is not the key learning we are after... the technology provides access to something deeper... the cell structure... the workings of your own human heart. It is when we access the deeper stuff the we learn. Technology itself is a tool, a tool is used to create, to discover, to lever us into understandings we couldn't achieve before.

upload.wikimedia.org/.../Beating_Heart_axial.gif

The key point is...

...the tool (I.T.) is embedded within learning, it has to be taught within each subject. We therefore share the responsible for ensuring our students are equipped to succeed in an evolving technologically landscape.

Teamwork through photos

Our current grade 7 Physical Education unit teaches teamwork through Aussie Rules. Teaching teamwork can be a little cliché and the term itself can prove to be a little elusive as many of the discussions students and teachers can have don't break the surface that much. Often simple ideas of 'working together' and 'communication' are the key things that students say, sometimes without really explaining what they mean, but what does teamwork look like? feel like? sound like?


I was after something a little deeper so I've decided to use the following creative common pictures to lead the students, prompting them into some deeper discussion. The guiding look, sound, feel questions should help them identify some real examples of what teamwork is. The discussions take on a little more of a constructivist approach, which is helpful for them to connect to their own understandings of teamwork.


Finding creative commons pictures is easy, simply go to the creative commons search site and then type in the key search words just like on Google search. Why use creative commons to search? Simple... the photos are there to be shared, no need to worry about copyright issues and you have a great selection of photos available through all your key search engines. Here are the pic's I am using...

What does teamwork feel like in this soccer team?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/1384952210/sizes/o/

What does teamwork sound like in this rowing team?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigarnex/2536883387/sizes/l/

What does teamwork look like in this racing team?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/islandfreedom/2716487504/sizes/l/

What does teamwork feel like in this cheer leading team?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/moylek/1425919834/sizes/l/

iMovie and Coaching

So I know that a few of you who read this blog may be wondering why so many blog posts in one day, sorry for the overload! With coaching and life being super busy the first thing to go in my life has been study time, hence the cram to get in all the necessary work for my current COETAIL course on visual literacy.

What I have learned during this course is that to do things 'visually well' takes time. To be a master at all the different technologies out there is unnecessary and means far too much time on the keyboard aiming for perfection. In talking to some other people in the course it was concerning to hear people mention that 'presentation zenning' one PowerPoint took them eight hours... to me this is over the top. When is too much, too much? To answer this I have to pose the question of what will people get out of the time I am investing into each visual improvement. If the person will gain much then perhaps it is worth our time.

In my final project I used iMovie as a coaching tool, something which was very time consuming to say the least, but in my mind incredibly valuable. I wanted to create an instructional video for each of my runners so that they could see themselves running and understand what aspects of their technique needed to change. Here's the process I followed to create a personal instructional video for each of my runners:

1. I videoed all my Cross Country team running using a flip camera (I used four different capture angles)
   
2. The download from the flip camera was super easy through the USB connector. I imported straight into iPhoto, then transferred the footage across to iMovie.
   
3. From here I trimmed each clip so that I had only quality footage.
   
4. I removed the sound from the footage as it didn't aid the instruction
5. I played through the 'movie' and found key points in each runners technique at which I split the clip, created a still or slowed the video even more in order to give time to provide quality feedback.
6. I recorded the voice over directly into iMovie, which was essentially the instructional piece
7. I created some end credits, which summarised my coaching points
8. Played with the sound to ensure it was loud enough, final check...
   
9. Exported to a DVD (or in the case below to You Tube)
   

What I feel I have created is worth my time primarily because of the possibility of change in each of my runners technique, based on the feedback I am giving them. It was enormously time consuming when you add up all the videoing time, editing, voice overs and final touches, however I think it was worth it... I guess I will tell you next season when my runners come back with hopefully improved technique!

Here's an example of the finished product for one of my runners:

Jing... it can't get any easier!

One of the great little things that I have discovered and used a lot over the past 6 months has been Jing. Jing is basically a screen casting software available free off the web. The crew at Techsmith have done a great job at putting together a program which is super easy to learn and even easier to use! I think it took me about 5 minutes to get a good understanding of how to screen cast.

How have I used this?

• As part of our new staff wiki, I was able to put together a couple of videos on how to log onto the wiki and how to update a profile picture, both proving to be helpful for people to whom technology doesn't come easily
• For our department it has provided me with a way I can help others use programs and new technology without having to physically show them all the time (e.g. using google doc's)
• For homework which is to be completed for Physical Education we try to reduce the amount of time in class which is taken up to teach technology required in the homework. Jing provides a chance for us to provide clear instruction to students out of the class
• An example of this is in health where the program has allowed me to take screenshots easily, which I have then been able to upload to moodle to provide clear examples of 'what to do' for students e.g.
  

There is no doubt that this simple to use, quick to download tool has saved me time and allowed for my instruction to continue out of the classroom.

Web based video... it's all at our fingertips

When John Logie Baird first transmitted light to create an image which was not made from a shadow (this was a big thing back in the early 1920's), the television was born. However I don't think John would have guessed how influential such an invention would be over the next 90 years. In education the introduction of such technology has allowed students to see into cultures, environments and historical periods that they were never privy to prior to this invention. It's no surprise then that explosion of web based video has had an even greater effect on learning and education.


As a teacher of Physical Education I regularly use You Tube to assist in teaching sports and skills which are not common to the students I teach. When teaching a new sport to young athletes it is often helpful to show them what the real game looks like, and in an international school where we try to have a balanced curriculum with sports from all around the world it can be hard to find DVD's for each sport we teach. Unless you have a fantastic range of DVD's available in your department or school library, then the first place most people now turn is straight to the web and in particular to You Tube.


Recently I taught some circo-arts to my grade 6 PE class; one of the skills I taught was the diabalo, also known as the Chinese Yo-Yo. While teaching this to my class I soon found that one of the boys was especially gifted at this skill and after spending some time with him I found out he had self taught himself through you-tube. This was no surprise to me as I often find myself going online looking for coaching videos, dynamic warm up ideas, technique videos etc... I also find when I get in the classroom I often rely on You Tube to pull in a short piece of video to help the lesson have a range of learning mediums.


In our grade six Health Education class we teach a small unit on smoking and in particular we focus in one lesson on what the cost is to a nation and what governments are doing to stop this. In order to get something useful for the class I managed to go online, find 5 different videos, which I downloaded and imported into iMovie, edited, added some questions for the students and what I have now is a usable, effective video to assist me in my smoking lesson...





The greatest benefit of web based video is the fact that it is at your fingertips. Here are just ten real benefits of using web based video:

1. In the past using video was an ordeal as you had to ensure that you had booked everything well in advance. Now with web based video multiple classrooms can watch the same video at the same time
2. Students can access any videos shown online at home, which is great for re-teaching or for make-up work
3. Online video selection is increasing all the time. As we contribute the range of quality video's increases all the time
4. Web based video gives up to date resources for students.
5. Storage space is not necessary, nor are tedious recording mechanisms to ensure we know what we have as a department

If you aren't using web-based video in your classroom, or if your school is too narrow minded and ban's You Tube or other sites hosting video then you need to change things! There is no doubt in my mind that correct use of web-based video greatly enhances the teaching and learning landscape.

Instructional Digital Story Boarding...

So it hit me after catching up from a session I missed recently for our IT class that the process of digital story boarding was a perfect way to teach physical skills within Physical Education. If students can put together digital story boards for fictional and non fictional stories, then why shouldn't we use the same tool in Physical Education and get students to put together a digital story for teaching a specific skill?

Why would we do this?

• We all know that teaching a skill requires deeper knowledge of the skill
• By asking students to create an instructional 'digital story' we are requiring our students to understand the skill to a deeper level
• Creating videos for different skills can provide useful teaching tools in the future
  

Here's the rather simple process to create a digital story...

1. Decide on a particular skill to teach in the instructional story
2. Get the students to break the skill down into the key stages of the skill execution
   
3. The students will take photos of themselves at each of the key stages while executing the skill
4. Students will write an instructional narrative which explains the key teaching points for each stage of the skill
5. Upload the photos into iMovie and record the instructional sound track in time with the key stages
6. Export the instructional movie to You tube ready for the teacher to assess. If students have an eportfolio or if they blog you could have them embed the video into their blog so that you can use a reader to pull all the video's into one stream for quick and easy marking.
   

What we provide for our students is an opportunity to really understanding the principles behind the movement, the knowledge they gain from this process allows them to then effect change within their own technique and their peers. Depending on the age of the child this process could be more guided with the skills and stages already set out by the teacher.

We are soon beginning a Tennis unit where students have to analyse technique and break a skill into its parts, this will be the perfect chance for the students to show their understanding of a tennis skill through digital media.

To zen or not to zen?

To be honest, I'm tired of PowerPoint. The number of times I have had to sit through presentations where students, other staff or presenters read through their slides has gone well off what I can count with my fingers and toes (and believe me I have been guilty of this too). Often the slides are unappealing, disconnected from the content being shared, cluttered and full of 'special effects', which turns what could be a great PowerPoint into distraction, disconnection and disillusionment.

Presentation Zen is a breath of fresh air for those who are in my shoes, however like all good fad's it has its downside. The idea behind presentation Zen builds on the premise that pictorial information is much stronger at conveying messages than textual. If we can build our presentations around images that stimulate deeper thought, then the information we are trying to convey connects to our viewers more effectively.

The idea of Zen stems from Mahayana Buddhism, asserting 'that enlightenment can be attained through meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition rather than through faith and devotion' (answers.com). If our presentations are following a true 'zen' style then we must ensure our presentation itself, has sufficient time for meditation, self contemplation and intuition... essentially this is searching for a constructivist approach to presenting, the viewer constructs their own meaning from our carefully constructed PowerPoint.

How easy is this? in reality it isn't.

Many of us use PowerPoint to cover a lot of information in a short space of time, so the idea of reflection and time to meditate on specific content within a presentation is difficult to achieve. The mere fact that presenters speak throughout their entire presentation points to their being little chance for true deep reflection. I gave it a shot on a presentation I had done for our grade 8 Sports Education Unit, which focused on teamwork... here's how one slide completely changed...

The Old:


The New:

Coach

View more presentations from peteacher.

I think I know which one I would like!

7 ways I integrate IT...

Our COETAIL course has started again and I am going to be posting blogs a little more regularly over the next few months. Since starting the course last year I can see quite an impact in how I integrate IT into my everyday teaching.

So here's my top seven ways that I have used IT...

1. Google Forms: These have played such an important role in how I collect data. I use the forms in such a varied way and the fact that they are so easy to custom fit, has meant I have found many uses for them: collecting registrations for a monthly run that I organise in our local school community, collecting students choices for units, gathering sports team personal data and to gather parent feedback. Google forms have saved me enormous amounts of time and allowed me to focus on more important things.
   
2. Wetpaint Thai-ing in Wiki: As part of the role I shared with my wife as the new staff coordinators for our school we created this wiki to help people assimilate smoothly into Bangkok and our school. The wiki proved to be a collaborative space in which nearly 100 members came together to ask and answer questions, share knowledge and most importantly, connect. Although highly time-consuming in setting up the wiki the site answered numerous questions and the collaborative nature of the site meant that we weren't the only one's answering these questions! I used Google Analytics to track how much the site was being used and was surprised to see an average of 9 visits a day with over 12,000 page views in the past 5 months! Definitely worth it!
   
3. Google Docs: In our PE department we used a Google Doc as the 'virtual white board' to review our PE curriculum. It began with us all entering our thoughts about our current PE curriculum using 6 questions guided by De Bono's 6 thinking hats (we eached typed in a different font so we knew who wrote what). This rich document was then refined to create a list of things we liked and disliked about our current PE curriculum and gave us direction for curriculum changes. From here we created a new Google Doc which became the sketchboard for our new scope and sequence. The fact the document was shared, available for all to input, change, rearrange etc... allowed for much greater collaboration than would a static file.
   
4. Panthernet (Moodle): We are now using this school managed site in our PE department for information delivery, quizzes, and enrichment work. It isn't always the most simple to use, however once you know the ropes you can create a rich online support site for your classroom.
5. iWeb: From fooling around with iweb on my mac I created a static web-page which houses all our PE department's important documents on once site (Scope & Sequence, Standards, benchmarks, philosophy) and hyperlinks to all our units on our school shared server (which can be accessed from home). I then was able to email this to all our department (we all use mac's), and they were able to save this on their laptops. The idea is that this has the most up-to-date resources we are using and is user-friendly so that our fellow PE teachers who aren't so tech-savy can access the information they need swiftly and simply, saving time in the long run! They bookmark this static page and can access it directly through firefox.
   
6. My Google Reader: This has been a simple and effective way to receive relevant professional reading. I love the fact that I can get a quick summary of others blogs, read deeper if I wish, or mark as read as needed! My favorite two blogs include 'Mr Robbo -The PE Geek', a great blog from an Aussie PE teacher who has IT ideas oozing from his pores and 'Leadertalk', which sometimes provides some inspiration for aspiring leaders!
   
7. My Blog: This has given me a chance to be reflective to a wider audience. It has provided a reason to write and to share and it is creating a professional learning focus for me.
   

At the start of the course I set a goal in my first blog post: "My goal is to use technology so that I can do the things I REALLY want to do, it has to free up my time, not suck up my time." The reality is that technology has freed up much of my time, with the above examples really making life easier. The problem is that staying up with the technology has filed some of the time that has been freed up. The more I learn, the more realise how much more I could learn. The reality is that somewhere we have to draw a line... I'm learning this and drawing some clear lines with permanent marker... so don't worry, I'll never be tweeting you, I'll be out for a run.

Google Forms take the pain out of fitness testing... well at least for the teachers!

Ok, so we all know that PE teachers hate paperwork (well most of them), but there is one thing that seems to frustrate us all... when paper work takes away from activity time and our own time.

In my current school we have been using the FitnessGram tests to complete our triannual fitness testing. In the past all the results were taken manually and entered into either excel, the FitnessGram software or onto PowerSchool (our online reporting software). We thought we were pretty good at keeping the kids 'connected' by getting them to log onto PowerSchool to check there results and then use these in moodle via an online worksheet which allowed them to reflect on their results and where they were positioned with the different fitness zones. This proved to be a effective way for the students to reflect on their fitness levels out of class time, while also increasing activity time and integrating IT into our subject.

What was a hassle was the process of transferring the data from the little sheets the kids recorded their results on, into our online reporting system (PowerSchool). What should be an easy task tended to take a few hours going through each child's fitness result form, collating the results and then manually entering them onto PowerSchool... not any more.


All we did was create a GoogleDoc form, which allowed the kids to input their data, which was automatically collated, and then exported, sorted using excel, and finally uploaded into PowerSchool.

Very sweet, very smooth.



To ensure the kids didn't loose activity time we built the input session into a fitness circuit around the gymnasium. At one station we had 12 laptops ready to go with the GoogleForm bookmarked for each child to input their data into. Students referred to charts to work out their fitness zones and in a short time got a clear picture of their fitness level. This station served as a rest and drink station as well, which all combined to create a meaningful learning experience, while saving us time. Good times! We had class sizes from 30 to a combined block of four classes with 110 students in the gym entering data within the lesson. Never again will I manually enter this kind of data again!


If you haven't tried GoogleDocs check them out. They are very easy to use and effective in the classroom.

Fantastic Picture...

This is well worth looking at... Check out the original; it allows you to click to each of the famous people on Wikipedia.