Relection

Recently, through a master's level technology course, my eyes have opened in ways that I never saw possible. Being in the physical education field, I have been limited in many ways with technology. The main goal of a P.E. instructor is to have his or her students participating physically at all times. With most schools, technology in the gymnasium is not possible, so the mere thought of it is just dismissed. For me, during and after this course I have acquired skills that may push the issue to make technology possible in my classes. I have learned skills such as how to create: wikis, blogs, and podcasts. Also the downloading and posting audio recordings will intrigue my secondary students. In high school, students are continually stimulated by anything that has to do with the internet. For some of my other students that are being challenged with why getting ones heart rate up everyday is important, a class discussion on a wiki could be a huge benefit. Learning these valuable skills could give me more of an edge for reaching some of my non-participating and participating students.

With the knowledge that I have acquired in technology I can easily see that I have been missing some tools to help my secondary level students. I have only begun to scratch the surface of the different technological ways to stimulate my students. I believe that we as a society are moving at almost light speed into the future with the different technological advancements that are surfacing each and every day. I believe that it is my job as an educator to stay on pace with this new trend. After taking this course I have only begun to learn the basics as I will be diving further into wikis, blogs and podcasts to not only become more efficient but to catch on to the new advancement that will soon follow. Finding new ways to reach different students is always a thrill but finding a way to integrate something that will spark the interests of a great percentage of your students is mind blowing. As I continue into the future, technology will further impact my students in positive ways.

My first long term goal for my classroom would be to steadily place my idea of using a class blog into the curriculum for my healthy living and conditioning class. With this blog we could set up many discussions about different programs, eating habits, healthy choices, supplemental use, etc. Having a central place such as the library or the computer lab would be another obstacle to overcome. Convincing other people of the stereotype, “Physical education is just kickball,” is not in any way true would have to be on the forefront. Once the importance is established, I think the sky is limit for my students. “Educators are using blogs in all areas of the curriculum to collaborate with subject-specific experts, to archive learning, to share results of experiments, and to publish student work. Language students can create conversations with native speakers and physical education students can log and analyze their workouts or diets” (Richardson 2006). Creating their own blogs to discuss different topics in health that they feel are important or even being overlooked would improve their overall knowledge while giving them an outlet to do it in a manner that aligns with their 21st century skills.

My second goal is to attempt to form a committee that will work towards finding different ways to acquire more technology in our building. Goals for the committee would be to find ways to gain more computers or laptops. We could do this by writing different grants or visiting different places that could help with donations or even ideas on how to achieve our goal. In forming this committee I would love to maybe get some other high school teachers on board that are seeking to implement technology but are frustrated with our resources. Also, I would love to get the other physical education teachers in the district on board with this movement towards technology.

Students today are known as digital natives and are believed to be fundamentally different (McHale 2008). As an educator, I must change with them times, the children and the procedures. It is for our future.

McHale, T. (2005). Portrait of a digital native. Technology & Learning. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/article/4572

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.